


Every Dawn a Miracle

by marcicat



Category: Hocus Pocus (1993), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Crossover, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Beginning, Happy Ending, Happy middle, NaNoWriMo, Obviously Binx is back because reasons, Pitch loves drama, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcicat/pseuds/marcicat
Summary: The whole thing felt ridiculously convoluted for a plan that essentially only had two steps: find Pitch and Max, and get them back to where and/or when they were supposed to be.





	Every Dawn a Miracle

**In which Dani investigates a haunting**

“You said you’re a student?” She looked around the apartment. There were certainly a lot of books. Books, papers, piles of newspapers — where did you even find newspapers anymore?

“Salem State, yeah. Go Vikings.” The girl straightened up a stack of books that was precariously close to tipping over. “And you’re a ghost whisperer.”

Dani coughed. “Well — that’s maybe an exaggeration. I’m a consultant on historical places and artifacts. Some of which happen to be haunted. Or cursed, or really anything along those lines.” She didn’t think the apartment looked particularly haunted. In need of a good cleaning, maybe.

“I don’t think it’s the place.” The girl frowned. “It wasn’t haunted when I moved in, I don’t think. But an artifact — unless it’s a book — do they have to be connected to something physical? She just shows up.”

Most people preferred to think that ghosts had a physical anchor, because it made them more tangible. People liked the action element — get rid of the anchor, get rid of the ghost. The reality was usually less action-adventure and more a lot of negotiating. “Not always,” she said, keeping it vague.

“I heard you worked with a cat,” the girl said.

She didn’t sound as skeptical as people usually did when they said things like that. Or, no — she corrected herself. She did sound skeptical, but not about the fact that someone would be working with a cat. More like she was suspicious the cat wasn’t there, like maybe Dani wasn’t taking her ghost seriously. Weird.

“He’ll be here soon,” she said. It was too bad he hadn’t come with her from the start. She was used to him being the one who remembered names; she was terrible at it. “So, when you say the ghost just shows up —“

“She comes and goes, yeah. She’s no trouble, really.” She looked around like she was checking to see if the ghost was listening in. “I wouldn’t have called you at all, except I have a friend coming to stay for a few weeks. She’s about the same age as the ghost looks, and I wanted to make sure that was okay with her. The ghost, I mean.”

That wasn’t what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t like there was a rule book for this sort of thing. (Maybe she should write one. Could be useful if she ever got amnesia, or wanted to take a long vacation, or something.) “Have you tried asking her?”

“She won’t talk to me,” the girl said. "But she gave me your number."

Seriously?  Ghosts didn't usually go to that much trouble to find her.  Not when they could just poke Thackery on the astral plain, or whatever.  He usually described it with more dignity.  "So she is communicating?"

"She dropped a book on me while I was sleeping, and then flew a newspaper around the room.  By the time she was done the only page not in shreds was one with an article about you.  I got the message."  Possibly seeing Dani's startled expression, she added, "It was a small book.  And she did sort of whirlwind all the paper into a little pile to make it easier to clean up."

"Huh."  It would be a good time for Binx to show up.  Especially since it didn't seem like the ghost -- if that's really what it was -- was currently present.  She checked her phone.  The girl didn't look impatient, but she didn't want to strain the hospitality of a student.  She was already working hard to suppress her curiosity about how young said student looked.  None of her business; she was letting it go, totally focused on the ghost issue.  She was in luck; the collar GPS pinged into existence right outside the door.  "Oh, there he is."

She opened the door and Binx stepped delicately into the apartment.  "Everything finished up?" she said.

"It will be, by the time we need it," he answered.

Not even a twitch from the girl.  Talking animals, not a surprise, apparently.  Then again, she had said the ghost wasn't a problem either.  "This is Binx," she introduced.  

"Nice to meet you," the girl said.  

She felt the back of her neck tingle and looked around.  The ghost had arrived.  And — another in the string of surprises — it was a familiar face.

"Emily?" 

"Thackery!" Emily exclaimed.  "There you are!"

"You know her?" the girl asked.   

Binx gave a quiet cough as a warning.  Not everyone reacted well to the swap from corporeal cat to incorporeal human.  Somehow she thought this client was going to be just fine with it.  She turned around to see Thackery giving Emily a stern look.  "What are you doing here?"

"Haunting," Emily said.  She crossed her arms.

"Why?" Thackery said, sounding baffled.

"Why not?"  

Dani looked back and forth between them.  "So, this is a surprise.  Not that it's not good to see you, Emily.  A pleasure, as always."

Emily giggled, and gave a quick curtsy.  "Hello Dani."

It didn't look like she was going to offer anything else.  Dani took a deep breath, and discarded the first three questions that popped into her head that were things she wanted to know but weren't actually critical to the situation.  Hopefully.  "Is it going to be a problem for you if a child comes to visit?"  That was what they'd been asked to find out.  The family conversation it looked like they needed to have could wait.  Hopefully.

"Nope."  

She looked at the girl who'd called them.  "Good?"  

She was studying Emily.  "Why wouldn't you talk to me before?"   

"I needed you to call Dani.  Don't lose that number."

Which was cryptic, and then she disappeared, which was even more cryptic, and it was only then that she realized Emily had been using modern language -- she looked at Thackery, but he seemed as confused as she was.  "I have no idea," he said.  And then, more slowly, "I have -- one idea.  Two ideas.  One would be better than the other."

"Well."  She clapped her hands together.  "At least we got your question answered.  Anything else we can help with?"  

"Do I pay you now?" the girl asked.  "Or do you send a bill?"

It was always so nice when they offered to pay.  "Strictly gratis.  But thank you."  There was a trust, it turned out.  Binx had set it up as soon as technology had advanced enough that a cat could make a phone call.  (Easier than she would have once thought, although touch screens still gave him trouble.)  "We're basically volunteers; this sort of thing is all part of the good citizenship clause."

"Okay."  It was the second time she'd looked skeptical, but she didn't push it.  "If you're sure."  

"We're sure."  Binx was a cat again, and he butted his head against the girl's knee.  She gave a delighted-sounding laugh.

"May I?"  She reached a hand out but didn't make contact.  Binx stood up on his hind legs to push his head into it.  "Oh!  Thank you."

"You're most welcome," he said.  "Please say hello to Emily for me when you see her next."

The girl gave him a careful pat, and then a more enthusiastic scritch behind the ears.  Dani didn't bother to hide her smile.  He was irresistible.  "If I can ask -- how do you know her?"  

"She's my sister."

 

**In which there is a forest, at night**

"You know, when you said that things would be finished up by the time we needed them, I didn't think you meant we'd be the ones finishing them."

She pushed a branch aside to clear the path for Binx.  "Well, you didn't ask that specifically.”

"We're wandering through a forest at night.  In October.  These are the kinds of things I like to know about ahead of time."  At least it wasn’t too cold.  
   
“It’s twilight. And I enjoy forests at night."

The cat with night vision and a fur coat enjoyed forests at night.  Shocking.  "I can't see in the dark."

Binx put a paw up on her knee.  "Dani.  I would never let you run into anything." 

"I know.  I trust you.  I maybe don't trust your ability to recognize a red pine, though."

She could practically feel the look he was giving her. “Red pine, or Pinus Resinosa Aiton, also known by the common names Eastern Red Pine, Northern Pine, or Norway Pine.  Tolerant to cold and periodic flooding, the Red Pine is also one of the most fire resistant native tree species.  In the top three, in fact.  I spent several decades with an arborist; it was very educational."

She gave her best impressed expression, since he could probably see it.  "That is more than I ever knew about pines, red or otherwise.  Can you ID it in a forest, though?"

Usually Allison handled anything that had to be collected out of the forest.  She was good at it; she said she had an understanding with the local trees.  But she was busy with her own full moon project, and the waterfront was too far from the park to fit in both of them.  

"Ah," Binx said.  "No.  But Allison told me the incantation, and with the Latin name we should be able to find one relatively easily."

"Yes. Did you hear that?” They both turned to look back along the trail. It wasn't -- completely unreasonable to think someone might be in the woods. They were there, after all. But a local would have checked in with Allison, and out of towners usually travelled in groups.

Whoever it was, they were talking as they walked. She strained to catch the words. "--in the creepy forest at night, they said. It'll be fun, they said. It's not like Massachusetts has different trees than Pennsylvania. Just take a trail map, and -- oh."

Everyone froze for a second as they came face to face. It was a kid, or it looked like a kid. Wearing a backpack, the glow of a phone in one hand. She didn’t look frightened to see them, but she wasn’t confident enough to keep walking past them. “Hi there," the kid said. "Nice night for a walk."

Dani waved. "Hi. You lost?"

"I'm good, thanks. You?"

"We're good too. Not lost. Though if you see a red pine, we're looking for one." She tried to look non-threatening, like a person wouldn't need to call 911 if they saw her in a forest in at night.

The kid looked confused. "You're standing next to a red pine."

Well, wasn't that convenient. She nudged Binx. Decades with an arborist, and they were standing right next to the tree they were looking for without realizing it. "Thank you," she said finally, after trying and failing to come up with something better.

"I should probably --" The kid gestured to the trail, but she didn't actually start moving.

"So here's the thing." She very carefully didn't move, but she caught the kid's eyes. "You seem really young to be wandering around the woods by yourself at all, let alone at night. Do you have parents out here? A guardian who could walk with you? Immortal cat that you accidentally-on-purpose got yourself mystically bonded to?"

"What?"

She shook her head. "Never mind. What I'm saying is it would make me feel a lot better if you weren't alone. Is there someone you can call?"

The girl gripped her phone tighter, like she was deciding if she was going to make a run for it. “I’m not scared. I’ll be fine,” she said.

"See, that is never as reassuring as people think that it is. What if you get lost, or you run into coyotes, or college students?"

Weirdly, the girl stood a little straighter at that. "I have protection," the girl said. "The Easter Bunny."

That was a new one. The Easter Bunny was taking kids under his protection again? That hadn't happened in -- she looked at Binx, who gave his cat version of a shrug. A long time, anyway. If it was true. "Kid. That's great. I'm happy for you. But springtime is in Australia right now. He's not exactly local backup."

The girl tapped her foot on the ground. "Bunny, I need you."

She'd hardly finished speaking when a whirl of color appeared behind her. “Two hundred kilos of rabbit, coming at you, tunnel express! Ankle biter, you got trouble? Let me at 'em! These two?" He paused, and leaned down closer to the kid. In a voice that was nowhere near a whisper, he said, “They look pretty scrawny, short stuff. I bet you could take them.”

"Now do you believe me?" the girl asked.

Dani held up both hands. "Look, I believed you before. I just didn't know about the instantaneous travel abilities -- that's very impressive, by the way."

"You've helped us with our search," Binx spoke up. "Maybe we can help you with yours."

"The cat talks," the Easter Bunny said. "Of course it does. Why didn't I expect that?"

The girl's expression was all fierce determination. "I'm looking for a witch."

"In the woods?"

"You're in the woods."

"Yeah, but we were looking for a tree. There's a logical progression there." Then she realized what the kid meant. "Oh, you mean us? No, ha ha, of course not. No witches here. Why would you think that?"

"You're in the woods on the night of the full moon, looking for a tree?"

The Easter Bunny pointed at Binx. "Are we all ignoring the talking cat?"

"I am most certainly not a witch," Binx said, sounding affronted.

It was only getting darker and colder as they stood around arguing. "Why are you trying to find a witch anyway?" That seemed like it was the most important question. If the kid was just looking for something simple, she might be able to help out. It was Salem, after all -- almost everyone could manage a little domestic witchery if the need arose.

The girl tilted her chin up. "I'm trying to find Pitch Black. The Bogeyman."

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Okay." Binx stayed quiet, but he leaned in close enough that she could feel him at her side. "That --" Sounded like a terrible idea, actually. "Sounds like there's a story behind it," she said. "So how about this -- I'm going to gather some of this bark, and then we'll go see an actual witch, and you can explain the whole thing then."

 

**In which Sophie explains the plan**

Allison wasn't exactly thrilled. She pulled Dani aside as soon as she walked in the door. “You kidnapped a child? How did this happen? It was just supposed to be a quick trip — go in, get the bark, come back. There are no random encounters with people looking for the Bogeyman on that itinerary."

"She didn't kidnap me," the girl said. She walked right up to Allison and held out her hand. "I'm Sophie Bennett, it’s nice to meet you."

"See?" Binx muttered quietly behind her. "Other people get introductions. This is how you learn people's names."

Allison shook her hand. "I'm Allison, and this is Dani and Binx. I'm very glad to hear you weren't kidnapped. Is there someone we should call to let them know where you are?"

The Easter Bunny had already disappeared at the edge of the forest, heading back to Australia, or wherever else he was spending his time. She was waiting for Sophie to say no, so she was surprised to hear, "I'm staying with someone in town. I already texted her. She's coming to meet us."

Sure enough, there was a knock on the door. "That was fast," Allison said. Of all the weird stuff they'd seen, fast travel time was hardly the most shocking. She opened the door, only to reveal the same person she'd met with earlier in the afternoon.

"Dani?" the girl said, and then, looking past her, "Sophie!"

“Cupcake!” There was a flurry of hugging, and Allison caught her eye and mouthed ‘Cupcake?’ She shrugged.

Allison stepped forward, just enough to catch everyone's attention. "I suggest we sit down in the next room, where we can be more comfortable, and sort all of this out."

Of course, sitting down meant everyone wanted to take their shoes off, and then Allison offered up hot drinks, and she was pretty sure Sophie had dozed off by the time everyone was settled. She rallied quickly with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. "Five years ago, the Guardians of Childhood fought with Pitch in our town. We were both there, I don't remember much of it. I was three."

"Two," Cupcake corrected.

"Almost three," Sophie said. "Anyway, the Guardians won, but Pitch was still around after that. And now he's not, so we're looking for him. We think a witch can help."

Allison nodded like that all made perfect sense. Personally, she was hoping for a little more explanation, and she looked at Cupcake hopefully.

"It's true. And he's a Guardian just like the rest of them, no matter how much any of them deny it. Fear isn't always a bad thing."

"Can we get back to the witch part?" she asked.

"This is the spookiest place that anyone I know lives," Sophie said. "So I figured, start here. And October was good because it's Halloween, and any holiday where people scare themselves on purpose seems like Pitch would like it. But we've been looking for a while, so probably he doesn't want us to find him, or something else doesn't want us to find him, and either way it seems like a witch would be helpful."

It was one of those things she was sure would have made perfect sense to her 8 year old self. At 32, she liked to think she was a little more cautious, but she wasn't entirely sure it was true. She looked back at Cupcake. "And you?"

She just shrugged. "I have an apartment. We look out for each other. What about you, with the ghosts, and the cat?"

She looked at Allison, who shook her head.  “No way, you can explain it better than I could.”

“Okay.  Well, in 1998 my family moved to Salem right before Halloween, and my brother lit a candle that brought three witches back to life who wanted to suck the life force out of kids so they could live forever.  And we — me and my brother and Allison and Binx — stopped them.”

“They’re the ones who turned me into a cat,” Binx said.  “After they killed my sister, Emily.”  He nodded at Cupcake.  “Who is currently haunting your apartment for reasons still unknown to us.”

“That’s when we all met,” Dani added.  

“Wow.  That sounds way more complicated than our story.”

“We’ve had longer to work on it,” she said.  “Things like that tend to grow — bits that didn’t seem super important at the time will turn out to mean something later, and you’ll wind up adding them in to your telling of the story.”

“What makes you so sure Pitch is missing?” Allison asked suddenly.

Sophie and Cupcake exchanged a look.  “The other Guardians can’t find him,” Cupcake said.  She hesitated, then added, “And I had a dream about it.”

“A prophetic dream?”

“More like a nightmare.  Sort of.  Pitch was using the Sandman’s dream sand to make nightmares, like actual big horses.  And I turned one of them into a unicorn, and it maybe showed up a few times after that and we talked.  Not like this, but like Sandy.  With the pictures.”

That must have made sense to Allison, because she nodded.  “And you’re not asking me to summon him, right? Just find him?”

“Just a location,” Cupcake said firmly.

“In that case, I think we have a deal.  Not tonight, though.  I need to get a few things first.  I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

 

**In which Dani and Binx have a conversation**

She wasn’t sleeping, but she was in bed and her head as on the pillow, so she figured it counted.  She nudged Binx.  “Do you believe them?” she asked quietly.

“The kids?  They remind me of you and Max.  Well, you and Allison.”

“Yeah.  Me too.”  That’s why she was worried.  They’d been in way over their heads, and no one had believed them.  She was torn between wanting to help them and wanting to get them out of harms way as quickly as possible.   

“Neither of them mentioned parents, did you notice?”

“I don’t think they’re runaways.  The older one, at least, really is a student.  ID badge clipped to her backpack.  The younger one — I don’t know.  The rabbit hasn’t had a protected child in centuries.  I don’t know what it means.”

“Did you ever meet any of them?”  The Guardians of Childhood were legendary, but they didn’t mingle much.  Salem prided itself on being a magical-adjacent community, and it wasn’t the only one, not even close, but they tended to be pretty insular.  She and Allison were working to change that, but it was slow going.  No one wanted to be the reason someone got revealed without their permission, but they had to be able to talk to each other before they could help each other.  It meant there were a lot of things out there that existed mainly in rumors.  She wasn’t going to say they weren’t real, but she didn’t know anyone who could personally verify them, either.  

“Not the big four themselves.  I heard Jack Frost joined up, though, probably around the time the kids were talking about fighting Pitch.  We met once.  He — well, we wound up in our current forms around the same time.  He’s the one who helped me figure out the talking thing, in fact.”

“Oh yeah?  What’s he like?”  

“Depressed, at the time.  Neither of us were exactly at our best.  It was a long time ago.”

She nodded. Three hundred years was a long time.  They’d talked about it, more than once.  She hadn’t actually realized what she was doing, when she promised forever, and as much as he claimed otherwise, she was pretty sure he hadn’t either.  But he said he was happy with the way things had turned out, and if neither of them knew what would happen in the future, well, that was the same for everyone else too, she figured.

“I wonder if he’ll show up too.”  She nudged Binx again, and he blinked an eye open.  “Do you think Emily’s okay?”

“I — don’t know.  But I don’t think she’s in immediate danger, and it will be easier to figure out the rest in the morning,” he said.  “Sleeping now, talking later.”

 

**In which there is another conversation, at the library**

After that it seemed like she was running into Sophie and Cupcake all over town.  Sophie was walking a dog in the park when she went for a run, Cupcake was ahead of her in line at the grocery store.  They showed up together to her monthly presentation on local history at the library.  Meanwhile Allison was hardly leaving the house, and communicating almost entirely by texting.  

“I mean, the weather’s been nice,” she said, putting her feet up on the chair.  “So at least we have that going for us.”

Officially, she was cleaning up after the talk.  They were held after hours, so the library staff had already left for the day, and she’d lock up when she was done.  Unofficially, she and Thackery we’re taking a break while Sophie and Cupcake finished off the last of the refreshments.”

“Is it weird being a cat sometimes and a ghost sometimes?” Sophie asked.

Thackery took the non-sequitur in stride.  “It’s always me inside.  If you dyed your hair, or wore a suit, you would look different, but you’d still be Sophie.  For me, cat or human, corporeal on not, I’m still me.”

“Like a werewolf,” Sophie said.  “Can Emily turn into a cat too?”

He paused, and then said, “I don’t think so.”  

She hadn’t realized that was a possibility.  Although there must be ghost witches, right?  She really didn’t know the ins and outs of the ghost experience.  “How is she?”  

“She sits with us at breakfast every day,” Cupcake offered.  “She doesn’t talk much, but she seems happy.”

It was a bit of a sore spot.  After her first enthusiastic greeting, Emily had steered clear of them.    Thackery was adamant that she could make her own choices and she knew where to find them if she wanted to, but the silence was wearing on him.  “And she hasn’t spoken to you about contacting us again?”

Sophie shook her head, and Cupcake said, “You’ll be the first to know if she does.  I’ve got to say, it seems like she’s waiting for something.  And before you ask, no, I have no idea what it is.”

“Do you think it’s connected to Pitch?”

She wasn’t sure who she was even asking, but it was Cupcake who answered.  “I think it would be an awfully big coincidence if it was, but an even bigger one if it wasn’t,” she said.

“Yeah, what are the odds there are two weird things going on at the same time?” Sophie said.

There was silence for. Few seconds as they all looked at each other.  And then Sophie added, “Is it too late to knock on wood?

 

**In which Allison prepares for a spell and talks about the past**

“Are you sure we really need all this stuff?”  She knew they did; Allison didn’t tend to over prepare.  But she did tend to get stuck in her own head before a big event, and talking helped.

“Yes, of course we do.”  Allison gave a small smile.  “I would never just make things up to get people to leave me in peace to work.  At least not to you.  If Max was here...”

“Have you heard from him recently?”  He wasn’t the best at keeping in touch, but it had been longer than usual since his last email.  She didn’t start worrying until it passed the thirty day mark, so she was still in the zone of mild concern.

Allison shook her head.  “Not since he ran into those vampire bat breeders, remember?”

“I’ve been trying to forget.”  She handed Allison the last candle for the circle.  “I guess it’s too late to hope he’ll start avoiding trouble.”

“Anything is possible,” Allison said.  “But I think Max and trouble may be destined to be together.”

They were both quiet for the next step of the set-up; Allison had to focus on getting everything set exactly in alignment.  She’d described the spell as ‘low in required power, but high in overall finicky quotient.”  The more precisely everything was set up, the more clear the location would be.  They certainly didn’t want to take the risk of angering a powerful and potentially dangerous being just to get an answer like ‘not here,’ or ‘somewhere in the Northern hemisphere.’

Max — and whatever trouble he’d found this time — could wait until after they’d done the spell.  Personally, she still had doubts about the wisdom of trying to locate the actual Bogeyman.  She’d heard all the arguments about how important he was, and that was all well and good, but if something had sent the embodiment of fear into hiding, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know about it.  On the other hand, she’d also heard all about Pitch Black’s flair for drama, so it was possible he was just waiting for someone to miss him.

“This part is finished,” Allison said.  “We’re ready for the others to join in.”

There were still had another ten minutes before they were supposed to arrive — something about a study group Cupcake couldn’t miss.  She stepped back to look at everything.  There were a lot of candles.  Seriously a lot.  She wasn’t sure how she’d missed quite how numerous they were during the setup.  “What’s with all the —“  She waved her hand around the room.  “And I thought you said pentagrams were overused and trite.”

Allison looked a little sheepish.  “I thought Sophie might like it.  And the candles are for extra wards.  I wanted a little more insurance that this wasn’t all going to go wrong on us. New moon workings are notoriously tricky.”

“Do you think it’s going to?”

Allison just looked at her.  “In all of the years I’ve been doing magic, the only time I’ve done something even remotely as bad an idea as this is was when I followed you and your brother that Halloween.”

“That bad, huh?  Why did you follow us that night, anyway?”

“Teenagers make bad choices?”  Allison shrugged.  “Honestly, it seemed like the right thing to do.  It was weird that you were able to get into the house at all; getting you back out of it before you noticed anything seemed like the most important thing.”  
  
That — didn’t make any sense.  “What?  Your door was open.”  Her memory of that night was a little vague, but she was clear on that, at least.  

“It really wasn’t.”

“It really was.  Open door, massive bowl of candy, people dancing.  You were upstairs.  That was kind of weird, actually.  You said you were on candy duty.”

“Oh, yeah — that wasn’t true.  We weren’t expecting any trick or treaters.  The house was warded; there wasn’t anyone there.  My parents were doing a thing with illusions.  I was supposed to stay out of the way.  I guess going with you two was my way of getting back at them a little.”  She shrugged again.  “Like I said, teenagers, bad choices.  It turned out pretty well in the end, though.”

That was something they could both agree on.  The rest of it was a surprise, though.  “I can’t believe after all this time I never heard this story before.”

“Well, we don’t talk about it much.  It didn’t seem like there was any reason to bring it up, if it wasn’t causing any problems.”

“Did you get in trouble for leaving?”  Allison didn’t talk much about her family, except to say that they weren’t around a lot.

“I never told them,” Allison said.  “As far as I know they don’t know I was ever gone.  If they do, they’ve never mentioned it.”

“Really?  That’s—“ she saw Allison’s expression and quickly added, “No, it’s fine, we would totally have done that if we could have.  It’s not like our parents believed us when we told them what was really going on, even when they could see it with their own eyes.  It’s just that we maybe should have compared stories, I guess, because our parents think we were at your house all night.  They still bring it up at family gatherings sometimes.”

“Why not just say you were home?”

The ‘since you were’ went unspoken.  “We couldn’t figure out how to explain Max’s room being trashed.  Eventually we figured we’d get in less trouble for staying out all night than for ruining stuff in the house, and Mom and Dad blamed everything on a mysterious burglar.”

She checked her watch.  Probably they should have saved the serious conversation for a time when they weren’t on a schedule.  Or maybe it was good — kept things from getting too thorny.  They had a good thing going, no reason to mess it up by digging through things that happened in the past.  “They should be here soon.  Sorry to bring all that back up.”

“It’s fine; I’m the one who mentioned it in the first place.  It was a long time ago.  May this night lead to an outcome of good just as that one did.”  Allison waved a hand and all the candles lit at once.  She smiled, and gave Dani a sort of sideways hug.  “You’re a good friend.  You ready for this?”

 

**In which Pitch is located and it doesn’t help**

After all the preparation and buildup, the spell itself was a little anticlimactic.  Cupcake and Sophie had been appropriately impressed by the setup, and they’d gotten underway in good time.  Binx stood guard for all of them while Allison read all the proper incantations, and they got their answer.

It just wasn’t the answer any of them had been expecting.

“The moon,” Cupcake said.  It was, by Dani’s count, the fifth time she’d said it.

“I guess that explains why we can’t find him.”  Sophie seemed to be taking things well.  Of course, growing up with the Easter Bunny as your staunch companion would probably give anyone a unique view of the impossible.  Maybe the moon didn’t seem like a overly daunting obstacle to her.

“That’s what the spell said,” Allison confirmed.  “Pitch Black is on the moon.  The shadowed side of it, I’d guess, but the spell wasn’t as exact about that as I expected.  Maybe because the distance is so great?”  She looked like she was ready to dive into research, or maybe it was just relief that the spell had gone so smoothly.

“What are you going to do now?” Dani asked.  “Are you — going to go to the moon?”

“Do you know someone who can go to the moon?” Sophie asked.

She didn’t.  Other than NASA, she supposed, and she didn’t think an explanation of ‘a magic spell said that someone we’re looking for is there’ would go over too well.  “I thought you might.”

“Well, there’s Manny, but he doesn’t really travel,” Sophie said.

“He’s the Man in the Moon,” Cupcake offered.

“Right.”  Of course.  “How does that — you know what, I don’t need to know.”

Binx leapt onto the table, drawing everyone’s attention.  “I think you should ask Emily,” he said.

Allison paled.  “Are you sure?”

Dani looked around, but no one else seemed to know what they were talking about either.  “What?”

Binx sat, twitching his tail slightly.  “Ghosts may have a connection to Pitch that most living creatures do not.  Particularly ghosts who experienced an unexpected death, such as a murder.  I’ve never had one, as the circumstances surrounding my —“ He paused, like he was looking for the right word.  “Situation, let’s say, were somewhat unusual.  But Emily might. It could explain her presence here.”

Cupcake was looking back and forth between Binx and Allison.  “And that would be —bad?”

Allison put her hands up.  “No comment.”

Binx’s tail twitched again.  “It’s not necessarily bad.  Or good.  It could be that if Pitch has abandoned his Guardianship duties on Earth that the usual rules are going unenforceable.  Spirits walking the earth more easily, for instance.”

“And that would be bad,” Cupcake guessed.

“That would be the good scenario, actually.  The bad option would be someone — or something — aggravating the spirits deliberately, making them more restless.  And, potentially, more prone to interfering on this side.”

“He means something might try to take Pitch’s place as the Bogeyman,” Allison said.

“What?  They can’t do that,” Sophie said.  “You can’t just swap them around; they were chosen.”

Cupcake looked less convinced.  “We saw what happened to the others when people stopped believing in them, Sophie.  And Pitch was able to use Sandy’s dream sand.  What if something else was able to take over some of his powers?”

“We won’t let them,” Sophie declared.  “We’ll find someone who can go to the moon and convince Pitch to come back.”

Dani couldn’t help noticing that unless Sophie was using the royal we, they’d all just gotten volunteered to help with her crazy plan.  She looked at Binx.  He looked back at her and tilted his head slightly.  Well, if he was in, she was in.  And if they were both in — she looked at Allison, who sighed.  “Sure, why not?” Allison said.  “We’re still stuck without a plan to get to the moon, though.”

“I might have an idea about that,” she said slowly.  It was a long shot, but she and Binx had helped out a woman with a cursed radio a few months back, and that had led them to a tech aura reader, who was friends with an EM sprite.  Sprites in general didn’t tend to be bound by physical forces — if anyone could bridge the gap to the moon, it’d be them.

 

**In which an expert is consulted**

They met up the next morning.  Somehow what she had envisioned as a quiet trip with just her and Binx doing a casual check in with their contact had turned into a massive production.  First Allison wanted to come with them, which seemed reasonable, except that she wanted all of them to take her car, which meant figuring out who was meeting who and where.  Then Sophie wanted to go too, and Cupcake wouldn’t let Sophie go without her, and suddenly all five of them were going, and Allison’s car felt a lot smaller.

“Are we there yet?” Binx asked.  “Kidding, kidding.”

They were lucky it was a short trip, and even luckier that Jamila didn’t mind the unexpected tag alongs.  She didn’t even bat an eye when they all piled out of the car. “Welcome,” she said.  “I thought I would be seeing you soon.  You must be worried, if you’re coming to me first.”

News traveled fast, but she hadn’t been expecting this particular news to have beat them there.  “You’re the only one we thought might be able to help,” Dani said.  “You know why we’re here?”

Jamila’s expression turned uncertain.  “You’re —looking for information about Max?  Is there something else?”

Sophie jumped into the silence that followed.  “Who’s Max?”

“What about Max?” Allison said.  “Is he okay?”

“So you weren’t coming to ask about him?”

“Well, we are now.”

“Maybe we should all sit down and compare notes,” Dani said.  

They sat.  It was a tight fit getting all of them in one room, especially when Emily shimmered into view next to Sophie.  “Don’t mind me,” she said.  “I’ve been waiting for this part.”

Binx immediately stood up.  “Emily, if you know something, it would be the kind thing to do to share it.”

“I know lots of things, big brother.  Not anything I can say about this, though.  There’s rules, for all that some choose to ignore them.”

Allison cleared her throat, . “In that case, why don’t you start, Jamila?”

Luckily, Jamila looked amused and not offended that Allison was taking charge.  The community in general was often willing to defer to her on the basis of either her family name or her long history in town, but it certainly wasn’t universal.  And they were the ones who’d come looking for help.  “All I’ve heard is a rumor,” Jamila said.  “But I know Max has got a nose for trouble, so I paid attention.  I heard he’s gotten himself caught up in a trap, something to do with the Groundhog.”

“The Groundhog?” Allison asked.  Dani gave her points for keeping the skepticism out of her voice.  Well, maybe ninety percent out.

She’d heard things — mostly rumors, and nothing very complimentary.  Her impression had been that the Groundhog was pretty reclusive.  She would have said no one could just stumble onto him and wind up in trouble with him, but if anyone could, it would be Max.  

(She always felt a twinge of guilt any time she  — and usually Allison too — had to step in when Max drew the attention of some magical or supernatural entity.  He’d saved her life by drinking the potion meant for her; it left a mark. More like a beacon, really, for all kinds of things.  They joked about him being a trouble magnet, but it was actually pretty true.  Some wanted to finish him off, some were just curious, but all of them had the potential to cause problems.  It was a good thing Max could make his own work schedule, for sure.)

“We’re looking for Pitch Black,” Sophie announced, interrupting her thoughts.  “He’s on the moon.”

Jamila raised her eyebrows.  “It’s true,” Allison confirmed.  “But we don’t have a way to get there, or contact him.  We thought you might be able to help.”

“Interesting request.  Let me think a minute,” Jamila said.

“Any idea on a location for Max?”

“You’re the witch,” Jamila said with a shrug.  “I just have my ear to the ground.  I steer clear of the Groundhog and all the rest of them.”

Cupcake put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder before she could say anything.  “Ask first,” she said.

“Can we call a friend, about the Groundhog?” Sophie said.

“Knock yourself out,” Jamila told her.  She waved her hand towards a closed door.  “I’m going to see about your moon problem.  Give me ten minutes in the workshop.”  She headed in and then stuck her head back out.  “Don’t touch anything.  Just kidding, make yourselves at home.  But maybe don’t touch anything that looks dangerous.”

 

**In which Sophie invites a friend over**

As soon as the door closed, Sophie tapped her foot on the floor.  “Bunny, I need you.”

Instead of the swirl of color she was expecting, there was a rush of cold air.  “Hey kid, what’s up?  Bunny’s a little busy at the moment, I’m standing in.”

“Jack!”  Sophie looked delighted, and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.  He gave Cupcake a high five over her head.  

“Jack Frost, at your service,” he said, looking around the group.  “Thackery?  Long time no see.”

Binx nodded his head.  “Jack.  I heard congratulations are in order.”

“What?  Oh, the Guardian thing.  Thanks, it’s been a trip.  Kids are great.  Working on getting the others a little more socialized.  Five years, we’re getting there.”

“Oh, do the thing,” Emily said, and Dani jumped.  She’d almost forgotten Emily was there, she’d been so quiet.  “You know you want to.”

Binx stood up and gave his sister a look only a cat could manage.  But he also made the switch to human form, and bowed in Jack’s direction.

“Hey, you did it,” Jack exclaimed.  “That’s great!  And I totally believed you the whole time, and did not at any point think I was imagining a talking cat who said he was a person.”  

Thackery rolled his eyes, a habit he blamed on Dani.  “I will pretend I believe you,” he said.  “You’re in on this too?”

Jack shrugged.  “The Man in the Moon says Pitch is a Guardian.  Even if he wasn’t, we kind of miss him.  A little bit.  He’s hidden himself from all of us, but if the kids think they can get through to him, I say they should at least be able to try.”

He turned to Sophie.  “Jamie says hello, by the way.  He also said he’s gotten you a hundred more followers for your Instagram account.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” Allison said.

“About instagram?”  Sophie looked surprised, and Allison shook her head.

“Not exactly.  More like what your family thinks you’re doing, or if you’ve told them.  Honestly, there have been a few times we could have used more adult backup, if they’re in the know.  We’re trying to build a network.”

Sophie and Cupcake both looked at Jack, who held up both hands.  “Oh no, I’m not sure involved in this explanation.  You’re on your own for this part.”

Cupcake sighed, but Sophie was undeterred.  “I’m on a school trip,” she said.  “Cupcake is chaperoning.  My pictures each day sync to the cloud and Jamie uses them to make up a few things that happened that day to send an email to our parents.”

“And they’re okay with that?  With you by yourselves?” Dani asked.  

“I go to a a self-directed school,” Sophie said.  “My parents are just glad I’m not telling everyone The Easter Bunny is my best friend anymore.”

“And...” Jack prompted.

“And they don’t know Jamie’s writing my emails,” Sophie said.  “Even though I think Mom guessed.”

“Jamie’s about my age,” Cupcake said.  “We were in the same class in school until I started here a year early.  He’s back home, in Burgess.  Pennsylvania,” she added, apparently remembering that not everyone would recognize the name Burgess.

“And having a blast narrating your days for your mom and dad.”  Jack flipped his staff over his shoulder and around his back a few times, like he was staying limber.  “So, social call, or can I do something for you?  If only the rabbit will do, that’s cool too, he’s probably done by now.”

Sure enough, she felt the same tingling on the back of her neck, and the Easter Bunny appeared next to Jack.  “What’s taking so long, Frost?  Where’s the fire?”

“The Groundhog took her brother,” Sophie said, pointing at Dani, which was maybe a little overdramatic, given what they’d been told.

“That rat!  Wait, aren’t you the ones from the forest?  What are you doing here?”

“We’re helping,” Dani said.  She gestured to the still-closed door.  “One of our friends is helping with your Pitch situation, and Sophie thought her friends might be able to help with our missing family member situation.”  For the older beings especially, a favor for a favor was as close to a universally recognized rule as anything.  Equal exchange never went out of style.

She got a suspicious look from the Easter Bunny, but Jack nodded. “That’s fair. Plus, come on, Bunny. The Groundhog’s a jerk; I’d ruin his day as a freebie.”

The door to the office swung open, and Jamila strode out holding what looked like a perfectly ordinary phone in her hand. She stopped almost immediately, staring at the scene in front of her. “This is unexpected.” She looked around, like she was checking if the people she actually was expecting to see were still there. Her eyes narrowed when she got to Sophie — it was hard to miss the Easter Bunny’s paw hovering over her shoulder. “So this is your doing,” she said. “You know, typically when someone says ‘make yourself at home,’ that invitation doesn’t usually extend to calling magical beings into that home.”

Sophie gave an impressively innocent expression. “But yours did because you’re so great? And you’ve always wanted to meet the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost?”

Jamila sighed. “Sure. We can go with that.” She nodded at the newcomers. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Bunny. Mr. Frost, you and I have met before, but welcome to my home.”

“Wait, really?” Jack said. “When was that?”

“2013, Solstice, Brunswick? You made the rounds; I’m not surprised you don’t remember me. I’d be surprised if you remembered any of it — all the winter spirits were incredibly amped that night. Pretty sure we even had a yeti show up at one point.”

“Phil! Yeah, good times. I don’t remember that.” He looked at Cupcake. “No partying until you’re over 300. That goes double for you, Sophie.”

“Don’t let your Puritanical roots trip you up there.” The Easter Bunny crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re still an infant in the grand scheme.”

“I was a Quaker, you overgrown kangaroo, how many times do I have to tell you?”

The Easter Bunny visibly bristled. His arms uncrossed and he reached for a boomerang. “What did you just call me?”

Jack scoffed. “What did you call me? Come on, you can dish it out but you can’t take it back?”

They were practically nose to nose. “Hey!” Jamila said sharply. “Knock it off. You’re guests in this house.” She looked at Cupcake. “Are they always like this?”

Cupcake hesitated, then nodded. “Pretty much.”

“I was a Puritan,” Thackery said conversationally.

It was enough to distract everyone and draw their attention, and he spread his hands out as if to say ‘and now look at us.’ “I don’t see what bearing any of this has on today’s questions. Perhaps we could get back to those?”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then Jamila said, “Right. So I have this phone…”

 

**In which more plans are made**

“We’re not calling it the Pitch phone.”

“But that’s what it is! Pitch phone, Pitch phone, phone to call Pitch.”

Dani closed her eyes, and she could feel Binx shaking with silent laughter in her lap. Cupcake and Sophie had been arguing about what to call their new phone ever since they left Jamila’s. At least Jack and the Easter Bunny had taken themselves elsewhere; thank goodness for small favors. The rest of them were stuck in the car, listening to increasingly ridiculous name suggestions.

Early on, Allison had attempted to be the voice of reason. “Why does it have to have a name?” Seemed like a simple question. But no, that had been an entirely different argument, and eventually she had given up. They seemed to have an unending ability to keep talking in circles — it was impressive, if also a little crazy-making. Or a lot. Honestly, it made her feel old, but she was trying not to think about it.

Emily seemed right at home in the middle of it all, though. “It doesn’t even make calls,” she said. “It only texts.”

Texting had been deemed the better choice, in a surprisingly unanimous decision. Phone calls were too easy to ignore, voicemails too easily deleted. (She wasn’t asking how Jamila had figured out a contact number. Some secrets were best left secret.) Texts were shorter; you could easily read them by accident even as you were deleting them. Jamila warned them that she couldn’t keep Pitch from blocking the phone entirely, but there wasn’t much they could do about that except hope for the best.

She was focusing so diligently on ignoring the conversation in the back seat that it took her a minute to realize it had stopped. “I’m just asking because I have a day off on Tuesday, and I wasn’t sure if you could wait that long.”

She had missed the question entirely, but Binx prompted, “To go look for Max.”

“You’re coming too?” It was the first thing that popped into her head. They’d gotten a general area to start looking from Jack, and she figured that was enough to get started. She hadn’t actually expected the group to stick together — the girls had their way to contact Pitch, and she and Allison had years of practice in rescuing Max from tricky situations. (Binx alternated between helping and offering sarcastic commentary from the sidelines, depending on the severity of whatever it was Max had gotten mixed up in.)

“Of course we are!” Sophie exclaimed. She bounced a little in her seat. “I want to meet the Groundhog!”

Cupcake nodded firmly. “We would never have gotten this far without you. We can work on Pitch and help you at the same time. So, Tuesday?”

She looked at Allison. “I want to do some research first,” Allison said. “I could do it over the weekend; Tuesday would work. The weather should be good enough if we end up in the woods again.”

“I’m on supplies, then.” She turned in her seat. “You want me to bring snacks for you too? Water? I can send you the list of what we usually bring.”

“See?” Cupcake said to Sophie. “They prepare for things. Not every adventure has to involve wandering outside in your pajamas and hoping for the best.” To Dani, she added, “The list would be great, thank you. We can bring our own snacks.”

“Bring a lot,” Binx said, while Dani was still trying to figure out the pajamas comment. “I like snacks.”

 

**In which deals are made**

Tuesday dawned bright, and unseasonably warm. “Seriously, what’s with the weather this year? I couldn’t figure out if I should bring a windbreaker or a parka. Maybe a raincoat?”

Allison barely glanced at her. She was doing yet another check of the map, and not really what anyone would call a morning person anyway. “So what did you decide?”

Dani, on the other hand, was full of nervous energy. It was always the same when they did one of these. Binx was grooming his paws, pretending he didn’t feel it too. “Oh, I brought all of them. That’s what backpacks are for, right?”

“Where are we, anyway?” That was Cupcake, travel mug of coffee in one hand and Sophie’s backpack in the other. They had showed up on time, although she suspected Sophie was in fact wearing her pajamas. Maybe it was a superstition thing? Good luck charm? “I’ve never even seen this part of campus.”

“Well, your off-campus apartment is really more like an off-off-campus apartment. This is the far side from the commuter areas, mostly grad student housing, that sort of thing. Lots of walking paths, not a lot of security. And a lot of recent reports of weird things happening.”

“Weird like what?”

“The usual — lights, noises, deja vu, time dilation. Paths that appear out of nowhere and can’t be found the next day. Nothing campus security didn’t dismiss as pranks, especially this close to Halloween. Sounds more like the Fair Folk than anything I’ve heard about the Groundhog, but this is the location we got from Jack, so we’ll start here.”

Cupcake’s expression looked doubtful, but she nodded. “Sophie, you ready?”

“One minute!” Sophie stuffed her phone into a pocket, and ran over. “I had to text good morning to Pitch,” she said. “Even though it’s not morning on the moon. It’s morning here, so that counts.”

She sounded very sure of it. Cupcake just shrugged. “Did you tell him where we’re going today?” Sophie nodded. It was — a little weird that they were treating the Bogeyman like he was their designated responsible adult, but also none of her business. She’d offered the help she could; they obviously had some expectation that this plan would work, or at least a significant amount of blind optimism. It could happen. She’d seen stranger things. Maybe.

“It should be right here,” Allison said. She folded up the map and moved to the edge of the walkway. “Based on the reports, and a basic prediction algorithm…” A path appeared in front of her. “There, good.”

The path curved into fog, despite the bright sunshine everywhere else. Binx leaped into her arms. “Well, that’s not ominous at all,” he said dryly.

Allison frowned. “Definitely Fair Folk. Let’s hope they remember us this time.”

Sophie, undaunted, took a picture. “Let’s go,” she said.

“Sophie, wait.” Cupcake snagged her backpack and held her back. “This isn’t Burgess.”

“I’ll go first,” Allison said. “You two in the middle, Dani and Binx in the back. We’ve done this before. Hold onto each other, and don’t let go, okay?”

Binx climbed up to her shoulders. He didn’t need the help, but she put a hand up for reassurance anyway, and he leaned into it. Sophie took her other hand easily, and the five of them headed into the fog. It didn’t get any easier to see when they were in the middle of it, not like a natural fog. They edged their way along the path slowly, but without stopping.

It was best not to dwell on what might be watching them, or where they might be headed, so she counted her breaths for a while. When that got boring, she planned the grocery list instead. They needed bread, but that was already on the list. She could add bananas; they could always use them in pancakes if they didn’t eat them in time.

“Oh,” Allison said suddenly, and they all stumbled to a halt as the path turned to grass.

The fog cleared in an instant. Magically, her brain provided, and she had to stifle a giggle. There was a mirror image group of Fair Folk in front of them — two taller at either end, a shorter one and a smiling child in the middle. Even a furred creature around the shoulders of the one opposite her, although calling it a cat would be a stretch. It was a common enough trick, and one they’d seen before. A bit of a literal imagining of getting back what you put in. The only difference was that they weren’t holding hands, and she gripped Sophie and Binx tightly.

“Well met, witch,” said Allison’s mirror.

“And you,” Allison replied, nodding carefully.

There were a few seconds of silence, as they all stared at each other. Even Sophie was quiet, although her mirror was making silly faces at her.

Then Allison’s mirror sighed. “This is awkward. You’re here for the boy?”

“As per our agreement,” Allison said, nodding again. They had a sort of truce with the Fair Folk, when it came to Max. Mostly because he was excellent at finding their traps by accident, and frequently led other people in just as accidentally.

“Yes, of course, but it took you so long this time, and he’s so — disruptive.” Allison’s mirror grimaced. “We don’t have him anymore. Another offered to take him off our hands immediately, and the decision was made.”

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but there had been a small part of her that was hoping it was going to be easy. “The Groundhog,” Allison said, and it wasn’t a question.

“You know him?”

“Of him,” Allison replied. “What is your offer of reparations for breaking our agreement?”

“We dispute the word breaking,” her mirror said immediately. “It is a flexible arrangement of mutual benefit. We brought another into the agreement; it is not broken.”

Yeah, that had been a long shot. Allison didn’t hesitate before saying, “We accept the dispute. What is your offer of reparations for bringing another into the agreement without involving us?”

It was her mirror’s turn to nod. “We accept the terms. We will send you to him to meet the agreement in full. Does this reset the balance?”

“We accept the terms,” repeated. “The balance is reset.”

She had time to bend her knees for the shift, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were in a cave. She caught her balance just in time to keep Sophie from tripping, and Allison steadied Cupcake on the other end of the line. She felt Binx’s claws digging in, just slightly, and his tail twitched against her ear. “Caves. I hate caves,” he muttered.

There was light coming from somewhere, but she couldn’t see any openings. “Now what?” Cupcake whispered.

“I’m hungry,” Sophie whispered back.

A booming voice echoed around them. “Finally! I thought I was going to have to go get you myself, that wait time was atrocious. You call this a rescue? I could have eaten him and sculpted his bones into a sundial by this point.”

What could only be the Groundhog stumped into view around a stone column. He was shorter than the voice made her think. No less grumpy, though. He surveyed them all with a dubious expression. “This is it, huh? Well, I’ve seen worse. And better.”

Rude. Which was kind of great, actually, because that meant she got to take over the negotiating. Allison got all the polite beings; she got the ones you could talk back to and not wind up spending eternity as a blade of grass. “You know, another name for a groundhog is a whistle pig, or a woodchuck. Not sure you’re in a place to throw stones — at least none of us have a silly tongue twister about us. And what would you even do with a sundial? I don’t see any sunshine in here.”

“Oh, a comedian. Wonderful. Because that’s just what I needed, on top of the troublemaker. Wait a minute —“ The Groundhog peered at her more closely. “You’re related, aren’t you? You must be the sister; he won’t stop talking about you. Won’t stop talking, period.”

Still talking meant he was still okay, despite the threats. That was good news. “We’d be happy to take him off your hands and be on our way,” she said, as sweetly as she could manage.

“Not so fast. I don’t make deals with the Folk just for fun. He may have been a thorn in my side, a gnat in my soup, a —“

“We get it,” Dani cut him off, and he glared at her.

“— ever since he got here,” the Groundhog continued. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted. But I’m not going to just hand him over. No way, no how. People think I’m a pushover. Just because I’ve got one cousin who lets someone pull him out of his den by the scruff of the neck once a year, they think they can get away with anything. No manners.”

This was the tricky part. “What is it that you want in exchange?” she asked.

“I want you to go on a quest,” the Groundhog said.

She managed to keep her mouth shut, but she guessed her expression did the talking for her, because the Groundhog glared again. “A quest, I’m sure you’ve heard of them. I’ve hidden Max somewhere in time. Don’t give me that look, I just said I’m not a pushover, I’m not bringing him back for you. If you can find him, you can keep him. I’ll give you, oh, eight tries. That seems more than fair.”

She swallowed. Chrono-manipulation was one of those powers she’d really hoped was just a rumor. “Why eight?” she said, trying to stall and get a little extra time to think.

“Why eight, she wants to know. First number I thought of. I mean, I could give you a bunch of mystical-sounding mumbo jumbo, about how eight is a very significant number. Numerologically speaking, that is, not to mention the significance of eight in each of your lives. And of course there’s the visual elegance of the infinity symbol, a sideways eight, perfectly representing the looping nature of time when one of you lot starts messing around with it. But yeah, it was basically random. Take it or leave it, I’ve got other things I could be doing right now.”

She had no idea if he was telling the truth or not. If it was just her, or even her and Binx and Allison, she would have said yes already. But they’d had a better idea what they were getting into than the kids. “We want to know how it works first. Surely a few extra minutes is no challenge for you.”

“Oh, an insult wrapped in a flattery. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to your entire family being someone else’s problem. How does it work? It’s simple. I give you a pocket watch, you figure out the rest from there. I’m the Groundhog, kid, the word fair isn’t anywhere in the name.”

She heard Sophie take a deep breath next to her. Her foot came up, and the Groundhog’s eyes snapped over to her. He waved a paw, and they were all suspended several inches above the ground. “Ah ah ah. Not so fast. Cute, but no cheating; the deal’s not with you, mini-kid.”

It was enough — the hint of a loophole was better than no hint at all. “The deal is with me. I’ll take it,” Dani said.  
  
“And me,” Binx said quickly. And then, more quietly, “Where you go, I go, Dani. That’s our deal.”

The Groundhog laughed, which was a disconcerting sound. Whistle pig, she reminded herself. Land beaver. Basically a giant squirrel. “You want it, you got it,” he said. He tossed something in her direction and she reached out to grab it without thinking. Her hand closed around it — the pocket watch. Everything went dark.

 

**In which there is a sudden and unexpected return**

She blinked back to herself at the house. She was still holding hands with Sophie, could still feel Binx on her shoulders. They were all there. It was even still the same day, at least if the digital calendar was to be believed.

“Everyone okay?” Allison asked.

“Good!” Sophie said. “Can we do it again?”

“I feel like I might throw up,” Cupcake said.

“That’s normal,” Allison told her.

“In that case, I’m good too.”

Binx stayed where he was, but said, “In one piece, good here.”

“Good here too,” she said. “I have the —“ She held open her hand, and the pocket watch glowed in her palm. It was sort of pretty, actually. “Anyway, it’s here.”

“I’m not sure why we’re here,” Allison said, letting go of Cupcake’s hand and turning in a slow circle. “This is definitely real, I can feel it. But it seems unusually generous of the Groundhog to make getting back here so easy.”

There had been something a little off about the whole interaction. She didn’t have a bad feeling about it, exactly, just weird. Sure, time was incredibly vast, but eight chances seemed like a lot. It was an unusual number for a magical deal, which were usually all about the odd numbers — threes and sevens, things like that. “Maybe he just wanted us out of his hair. Fur.”

“I’m going to let Pitch know how it went,” Sophie announced. “I like your house. It looks different without the candles.”

“Eat one of your snacks,” Cupcake called after her. She frowned at her backpack. “I think he kept my coffee. That was my favorite mug.”

“We’ll try to get it back, or get you a new one,” Allison said. “We should probably all eat something, if you feel up to it. Research is always easier on a full stomach.”

“I could eat,” Binx said, and she scooped him off her shoulders one-handed.

“Right, let’s get you food. What do you think, is this one of those magical objects you should keep close so it doesn’t disappear on you, or keep far away so it doesn’t disappear you?” She held up the pocket watch and eyed it carefully. It was still glowing.

“You’re already touching it,” Allison pointed out.

“True. And so far that’s worked out okay.” She stuck it in a pocket and resolved not to think about it until after lunch, or brunch, or whatever you called a post-magical journey meal.

 

**In which everyone hopes for the best**

 

Allison slid her book towards the middle of the table, and put her head down with a sigh. “I can’t find anything. Nothing about the Groundhog handing out magical pocket watches or sending people through time.”

“No, me either,” she answered, although to be fair she’d given up on the books a while back, and had been poking at the pocket watch with various metals to see what it would do. “It likes pipe cleaners. Fuzzy sticks, whatever they’re called now. Check it out.”

She held a pink one towards the watch. As soon as it touched the surface, it started to curl — she let it go, and it slowly shaped itself into a flower. “Neat, huh?” There was a little collection of flowers on the table, and she nudged the pink one towards it.

“I have no idea what to say about that.” Allison stared at the watch for a few seconds. “No, still nothing.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Dani whispered loudly. “The flowers are very pretty, thank you.”

Allison sighed again. “Dani… Someday you’re going to personify something and it’s going to come back and bite you. Not every magical object is friendly.”

She should have known it was coming. Every time they ran into something magical, it was the same thing. She didn’t want to dismiss Allison’s past experiences, whatever they might be, but she wasn’t going to ignore her own experiences either. “I get it, okay? But I’m not personifying anything, I’m showing respect and gratitude. Which is something you don’t have to be a person to appreciate. Did you know science has shown that plants and trees have feelings, and remember things? A little courtesy isn’t a bad thing. Also, some magical objects do turn out to be people, friendly or not.”

"Wait, really?"  Cupcake looked over from where she'd been studying a set of flashcards.  Dani hadn't realized she'd been listening in.  

"Sometimes," she said.  "We've run into it -- what, three times?"

"Three," Allison confirmed.  "Or four, if you count the mirror."

She'd forgotten about the mirror.  On the other hand -- "That was more like a conduit than an actually ensorcelled person, though."

"Three, then.  But that pocket watch is not a person."

Cupcake looked at the watch.  She had given it another fuzzy pipe cleaner, and it was turning it into a daisy.  "Are you sure?" Cupcake said.

Allison made a weighing motion with her hands.  "Ninety-five percent sure?  Things feel different than people, usually."

"I think we're going to have to open it," Dani said.

Binx chimed in from where he was batting at one of the flowers.  "Agreed.  Enough books, let's get to the time travel."

It wasn't exactly what she'd been expecting him to say.  Usually he was all for the cautious approach.  "Really?"

He rolled over to look at her, and she rubbed a hand over his ears.  "We have no reason to think that more information about things that aren't this will be of any use.  The rabbit had nothing to offer, and the groundhog isn't known for tricks.  His whole mythos basically hinges on truthfully predicting the future."

Sophie looked up from her phone.  "Pitch doesn't know anything either.  I get to come too, right?"

Cupcake leaned forward to look at the phone over her shoulder.  "Did he text back?"

"No."  Sophie shook the phone a little, like that might change what was showing on the screen.  "He turned on read receipts."

"At least we know he's paying attention," Cupcake said, and then oh-so-casually set her cards down and moved over to the table. 

"Passive aggressive much?" Allison asked quietly.

"Some of them buy into the drama more than others," Cupcake answered just as quietly.   "But I doubt he'd let Sophie go into something he genuinely thought would harm her.  He respects Bunny as much as he does anyone, for what it's worth."  
    
That wasn't nearly as reassuring as Cupcake seemed to think it was.  She put both hands on the table.  "Okay, ground rules.  Sophie's not coming.  You're not coming."  She pointed at Allison.  "You are definitely not coming.  Binx and I are going to open the watch and find out what happens.  All of you are on backup if something goes wrong." 

There was the expected arguing, but it was the only plan that made sense.  The Groundhog's deal was with her and Binx, so they had to go.  The person most likely to get them back was Allison, so she had to stay.  And she wasn't entirely sure why Cupcake and Sophie were still there at all.  Regardless, anyone who couldn't vote couldn't go.  

(They talked her down to adding "the first time" on that final point.  Which was -- well, she wouldn't have wanted to miss out on time travel either.  As long as it wasn't going to strand them in the past, or the future, or cause some kind of irreparable damage to the timeline that would end the universe as they knew it.) 

"Shouldn't you wind it first, or set it?  Whatever you do with a pocket watch."  Cupcake nodded towards the watch but kept her hands tucked into her pockets.  "How do you know when to start looking?"

She shrugged.  Honestly, they'd done a lot of less advisable things with fewer safeguards, but she didn't want to share that with impressionable young minds.  "It seems to have a pretty good idea of what it wants without any outside input," she said.  "I thought we'd just open it and see what happens.  Either it will take us to Max or it won't, right?"

She hoped it would be that simple.  It was really more of a -- spectrum of potential disasters than an either/or question, but she was trying to be positive.  There was a good chance she'd get to bring her backpack on this adventure, always a good thing.  Snacks, water, a jacket -- it was surprising how much they could brighten up a challenging situation.  And Binx would be there, just like they had promised.  She held out her hand to him.  "You ready for this?"

"Always."

 

**In which there is time travel**

They opened the watch, because they were always going to open the watch, and they always had opened the watch.  She wasn't sure she wanted to imagine the universe where they didn't.

She opened her eyes into night time, and blinked to try to get them to adjust.  "Binx?" she said quietly.

"Here."  

She felt his head butt against her ear, and she smiled.  "Hey.  Can you see anything?"  

"It looks like the school. I've definitely been here before."  He jumped down with a quiet thump.  "It's older, though.  Or newer, I suppose, depending on your perspective.  The addition from your last year isn't here, or the bleachers."

"Okay."  It wasn't full dark -- she could see enough so she wasn't going to trip over anything big, and she settled her bag a little higher on her shoulders.  There were lights on inside, so there was probably some sort of event going on, or else it was before conserving electricity was considered important.  "Well, I guess that's as good a direction to head in as any."

When they reached the door, it was unlocked.  Before the days of high security, for sure.  She still waited to see if an alarm would sound when she pushed it open, but there was nothing.  Thackery followed her in.  “I’ll draw less attention this way,” he said.  "And even you should be able to see in this."

"Ha ha, very funny."  It was weird how much the same it looked. Even the buzz of the overhead lights was familiar.

They both froze when they heard someone sniffling.  Thackery pointed at a closed door not far down the hall.  She knocked on it as gently as she could.  "Hello?  Can I come in?"

The noise cut off abruptly.  "Is it okay if I open the door?" she asked.  "I can stay in the hallway after. I’d like to make sure you’re okay.“         

“I’m fine,” came a young-sounding voice, after a few beats of silence. And then, “You can open the door, I guess.”

“Thank you,” she said, and pushed the door open carefully. She had to lean her head around the corner to see whoever was inside, and she was so surprised she almost hit her head on the door frame. “Allison?”

It was Allison, but younger. And she was crying in an empty classroom. Not good. “How do you know my name?” the girl said, all wariness and suspicion. “I don’t know you.”

Ah. She should have expected that. Cover stories weren’t really her specialty. She could hear Thackery trying not to laugh at her from the hallway. Allison looked about as old as Sophie, so she was definitely old enough to tell when an adult was lying to her. Honesty it was, then. “Well, this may sound weird, but I’ve time traveled into the past using a magical watch. I know you in the future. We met when I was eight, and you were fifteen. That was —” She paused while she tried to do the math. “About twenty-four years ago, for me. And still a ways in your future, for you.”  
  
Allison frowned. “Seven years. You’re a witch?” she asked. Did future-Allison remember this? Was she changing the past, or was this some kind of pre-destined conversation?

“No. Actually, you’re a witch. A good one. I’m — witch-adjacent.” Allison frowned harder, and Dani realized she probably didn’t know what adjacent meant. “I spend a lot of time with you,” she clarified. “We’re friends.”

“Did I tell you to come back and help me?” Allison said.

She really, really didn’t want to say no. “You weren’t exactly sure when we’d travel to,” she said instead. “What kind of help would you like?”

“You said we. Am I here too?” Allison was really taking this time traveling thing well. Time to see how ghosts would go over. Thackery stepped through the wall, and her eyes went wide. “A ghost,” she said breathlessly.

Thackery gave a short bow. “I traveled with Dani. You remained in the future, so that you might be able to rescue us if necessary.”

“So _I_ could rescue _you_?”

…And apparently they’d reached the limits of her belief in what they were saying. “Of course,” Dani said.

“Hopefully,” Thackery added.

Allison looked like she was thinking about it. But she hadn’t told them to get lost, and she hadn’t yelled for an adult. Which — “Hey, you know about stranger danger, right? Because you really shouldn’t listen to people like us. We could be anyone.”

“He’s Thackery Binx,” Allison said, pointing at Thackery. “I recognize him.”

She looked at Thackery. He looked as surprised as she felt. “You — do?” he asked.

Allison nodded. “You’re in our book. You went after the bad witches and no one ever found you. And Elijah was your best friend and he looked for you for a long time, and then he wrote it down in a book. I’m related to him,” she said proudly.

She wasn’t touching that with a ten foot pole. She tried to think about emitting relaxing vibes, or whatever it was Allison always did to keep people calm. “That is a remarkably concise telling,” Thackery said finally.

“I’m sorry you’re dead,” Allison told him. “And that you couldn’t save Emily.”

It just got worse and worse. She wished Thackery was in cat form, so she could at least offer a shoulder. He wasn’t looking too good.

Rescue came unexpectedly — Emily shimmered into view between Thackery and Allison. “Hey, lay off, kiddo. He did his best. Your story doesn’t exactly have all the details filled in.” She looked at Thackery. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you. What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation a few weeks ago? Haunting. It’s a thing, ghosts do it.” She hopped onto one of the desks and started swinging her legs.

“You remember that?” Thacker said.

“Of course. I’m from your now. Time travel was pretty easy to figure out; I’m surprised you can’t do it. Maybe it’s because you’re not a real ghost.” She poked him with a glowing finger, and he smiled.

Allison was looking back and forth from Thackery to Emily with an expression somewhere between delight and disbelief. Her eyes were wide. “I can’t stay long,” Emily said. She looked at Allison. “But when someone starts throwing my name around, I start paying attention, and I want to like what I’m hearing. You get me?” Allison nodded. “Great,” Emily said, clapping her hands together. “Well, good luck!” She disappeared.

“Let’s get back to you,” Dani said quickly. “You said you needed help?” She hadn’t exactly said that, but close enough.

Allison nodded again, more slowly. “I guess. It’s Open House, and Mom and Dad said they’d be here. But they’re not, and I can’t go and see everything if they’re not here.”

“So you want us to go find them?” She’d never actually met Allison’s parents, which hadn’t seemed strange until she’d started thinking about it. Allison didn’t talk about them much.

“No!” She shook her head. “They’re busy. But you could come with me, and then I could go to the Open House. There’s the art show, and games, and food. You can be my aunt. She’s from California.” Allison said the last part like it was an explanation all on its own — like of course someone from California would randomly show up with someone else’s child at a school open house.

But she could probably count on one hand the number of times Allison had asked her to do something for her. They hadn’t found Max, and she had no idea how concerned she should be about the missing parents, but — you do the good that’s in front of you, right? She held out her hand. “I was born in California,” she said. “So that works out perfectly.”

“Can I call you Aunt Dani?” Allison asked. Thackery was laughing again.

“Sure, you can call me Aunt Dani. Come on, let’s go find your Open House.”

 

**In which the past is not so different from the present**

Thackery made himself scarce when they reached the part of the school that was actually open for visitors.  Allison introduced her to everyone they saw as, "This is my Aunt Dani,  she's from California."  So far she'd been able to stick with basic small talk -- how are you, yes it was usually warmer in California, wasn't it nice that the kids were having a good time, that sort of thing.  

"This is my teacher," Allison said, pulling her over to a smiling woman.  "Ms. Olin, this is my Aunt Dani, she's from California."

"It's nice to meet you," Dani said, holding out her hand. 

She wasn't expecting the skeptical look she got.  "Nice to meet you too," Ms. Olin said.  "'Aunt Dani.'"  The air quotes were audible.  Did they even have air quotes in the early 90s?  "Allison, why don't you go say hi to your friends?  It looks like they're getting ready to start a new game, and we'll be able to see you from here."

Allison ran off without a second thought, and Ms. Olin put her hands on her hips.  "Who are you, really?  If you mean these children any harm, be warned: I am far from their only defense."

She held her hands up and tried to look friendly.  "I mean no harm," she said.  "I'm a friend of Allison's; she asked me to come since her parents aren't here."

"You're covered in magic," Ms. Olin said.  "You have a piece of advanced technology in your pocket, and you appear to have some kind of soul bond to a ghost.  You'll forgive me if I think there's a little more to the story than that."

Of course.  It was Salem; apparently she was going to run into members of the magical community everywhere she went.  First Allison, now Allison's third grade teacher.  She was definitely failing at staying under the radar. 

"Okay, first off, he's only sort of a ghost.  Sometimes he's a cat.  And we traveled back in time looking for my brother, that's probably the magic."  She tried to remember the rest of what Ms. Olin had said.  Advanced technology?  "The technology is a phone, actually.  They're great, you're going to love them.  Pretty much everyone has one in the future."  
    
Much to her surprise, all of those answers seemed to meet with approval.  Ms. Olin stepped closer, and she seemed more intrigued than suspicious.  "Time travel?  What kind of spell are you using for that?  If you'll excuse me for being rude, you don't feel like a witch."

"No, I'm witch-adjacent," she said, repeating her earlier explanation.  "And it's not a spell.  We're using a magical pocket watch; we got it from the Groundhog."  Ms. Olin looked confused, so she added, "You know -- Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Groundhog.  He does the time thing, it turns out."  Most of her attention was on Allison by that point, as the game they were playing -- some kind of musical chairs combined with trivia? -- was wrapping up.  

She couldn't tell who won, or maybe there was no winner, because all the kids got something handed to them before getting sent back to their parents.  "Look!" Allison exclaimed.  

It was an eraser in the shape of a pear.  "I wanted the strawberry," Allison told her.  "But this is good too."  

"It's great," she said, hoping that was the right answer.  "Did everyone have fun?  That's the most important thing."

Allison took her hand again and nodded.  "Now we have to go see the art room; that's where my drawing is."  

Ms. Olin was happy enough to see them go, or at least she made no move to stop them, and they waved on their way out of the classroom.  "She seems nice," she told Allison.  

"She's my favorite," Allison confirmed.  "She says a woman's going to be President someday.  Is that true?"

Ouch.  The kid had a gift for finding the sore points.  "I hope so.  But not yet."

"That's good.  I won't be able to run until the 2020 election anyway, so I can still be the first."  She said it with such utter conviction that Dani just nodded, and that was enough, apparently.

They toured the art room (she had to stop herself from using her phone to take a picture three separate times), the cafeteria, and the courtyard, but eventually it became obvious that Allison was stalling.  She stopped by a water fountain and waited for Allison to realize she wasn't following her any more.  When she turned around and circled back, Dani knelt down so they could talk quietly.  

"Do you -- not want to go home?" she asked.  She had no idea how long their visit was going to last, or what they would need to do to end it.  Short term, she also had no idea what they were going to do next, but loitering in the school for another few hours wasn't in her top five list.  

Allison bit her lip.  "I don't want you to leave."

"But you'd be okay with all of us leaving together?"  That, she could work with.  "Let's see if we can come up with a plan, then."  Eight-year-old Allison was a tough negotiator, but they compromised on walking towards her house, with the option to stop along the way as long as they stayed within view of the path.  It got them out of the school, at least, and she thought it had a relatively low probability of getting her arrested for kidnapping. 

“What am I like in the future?” Allison asked.

"Taller," she said.  Thackery glowed briefly by her side and then Binx was there.  Allison accepted the switch without question.

"Taller than you?"

"Yep.  Not taller than Max, though."  She kicked some leaves towards Allison, who laughed and kicked them back.  Binx batted one out of the air and then pretended he hadn't.

"He's your brother?" Allison said.  "I wish I had a brother.  Or a sister.  Or anyone, really."

Those sounded like pretty deep thoughts for a kid.  "Hey," she said, reaching out for Allison's hand.  "Family's not just about people who are related to you by blood.  It's people you choose, too, and who choose you back."

Allison was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Like you?”

She squeezed her hand. “Yeah, like me.”

Allison stopped suddenly. “Ohhh, I just thought of a way to find your brother. Come on!”

 

**In which Allison meets the Groundhog again, before (time travel is confusing)**

“What’s something that’s as strong as a choice?” Allison said. She’d brought them all in through the back door, and Dani was never, ever going to let it go that mini-Allison had Lisa Frank unicorn posters on her bedroom walls. (They were adorable.)

“As strong as a — I have no idea. A feeling?” She looked at Binx, but he shrugged. No help there.

“Curiosity,” Allison said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t you learn that in school?”

No, was the obvious answer. The real question was when had Allison learned that at school? She shrugged. “I must have been sick that day. I thought you couldn’t do any magic yet.”

Allison was digging through a box of what honestly looked like random junk, and pulled out a plastic circle that turned out to be a mirror. “I can’t, but I don’t have to. You have the magic watch, remember? We can use that to call on someone that knows about time travel, and ask them how to find your brother.”

She tried to remember how much she’d told Allison about how she’d wound up time traveling in the first place. “That may not be a good idea. I mean, it is a good idea, it’s just that we’re probably most likely to attract the Groundhog — like Groundhog Day? And he’s sort of the one who got us into this. He put Max somewhere in time, and he’s the one who gave us the watch to try to find him.”

“But he hasn’t done it yet,” Allison said. “So he doesn’t know that he did it, and he wouldn’t have any reason not to help us now. Trust me.”

What else was she going to do? She had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be that easy, but it was worth a try. “What do we need to do?” Binx asked.

Allison set the mirror on the floor and took a few steps back. “Just put the watch on the mirror. Reflections make things stronger.” Once the watch was in place, still glowing softly, Allison said loudly, “Oh my goodness, what in the world could this be? A magical watch with the power of time travel? However will we figure it out?”

It sounded like she was reading lines for a poorly rehearsed play, but there was a buildup of energy in the room that indicated something was definitely happening. Sure enough, it was the Groundhog who appeared in the doorway. “What’s all this?” he said. “How did you get that? That’s mine.”

“Hi,” Allison said, waving.

“Small child,” the Groundhog replied, sounding wary. “What are you doing?”

“Waving,” Allison told him. “Hi. Thank you very much for coming. Can you help us find someone?”

The Groundhog stepped into the room slowly, and peered at the watch. “Can I? Almost certainly. Am I going to? I don’t know yet. Who are you looking for?” He poked the watch with one paw, and it lit up with sparkles. “The mirror’s a cute trick.”

Suddenly he spun around and pointed at Dani. “Hold up, I know you!” He looked around the room again, like he was seeing it for the first time. “And you. All of you. Oh, this was a very clever plan. It’s not going to work, though. I’m not linear.”

Allison frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

Dani tensed, and for a few seconds it looked like she might need to find a way to intervene. (How, she wasn’t sure. She’d think of something.) But then the Groundhog’s expression softened. “Linear is a straight line. So for you, you remember things that happened yesterday, but not things that happened tomorrow.” He touched his paws together and drew them apart again. “Straight line. Beings like me have got a more flexible view.” He wiggled his paws, then waved them in a circle. “So I can remember meeting you, even though you don’t remember me yet.”

“Wow,” Allison said.

“Yeah, that too. Like I said, though, clever plan. Clever enough that I’ll give your friend some free advice.” He looked at Dani. “It’s less of a search, and more of a journey.”

 

**In which Dani and Allison have a talk**

“‘Less of a search, more of a journey?’ What does that even mean?”

“I have no idea! He said it and then he disappeared, and then I was back here again.”

They kept their voices quiet — they’d moved to the kitchen so they could keep talking, but Binx, Cupcake, and Sophie were all asleep in the living room. “They were worried,” Allison had told her. “They wouldn’t leave, and I didn’t mind the company.”

As far as they could tell, about the same amount of time had passed in the present as she’d spent in the past, but no one had thought to keep track. There was a lot of guessing involved, trying to figure out what would hold true for each trip and what might change. They were determined to do better next time. (She didn’t think they’d done too badly for a first try, but it sounded like the waiting might have been the harder of the experiences.)

“He did call it a quest when we were in the cave,” Allison said. She tapped her fingers on her mug. “And if we’re not picking the times we jump to, that would create some specific constraints.”

“You think maybe we’re not actually supposed to be looking for Max? Like it’s more of a ‘prove yourself with these tests’ thing, and he’s the prize?” That would be a little weird, but not inconceivable as far as magical beings went.

“Maybe. I wish we had more information.”

“Same.” She hesitated, and then asked, “Do you remember it?”

Allison looked surprised. “What, meeting you in the past? A little, I think. Why?”

She knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to say it. “I was — concerned,” she said finally. “About you. Also about changing the past and coming back and having everything be different, but mostly you.”

Allison kept her eyes on her mug, but she smiled, at least a little. “That was third grade, right? You know what I remember about that night? I really wanted that strawberry eraser. I didn’t get it — I got a pear or something, right? But I know I wanted the strawberry.” She shrugged. “Memory’s a funny thing. I don’t remember meeting the Groundhog, but the mirror thing sounds like a game I used to play. And I don’t know what you said to me, or what I said to you, but I remember feeling happy. It all turned out okay in the end anyway, that’s the important thing.”

That really wasn’t what she’d been getting at. She took a deep breath, but Allison beat her to it. She finally looked up and met Dani’s eyes. “I’m not going to talk you through my childhood so you can be reassured I wasn’t ever in any danger. Sometimes my parents were around, and sometimes they weren’t. It was fine. Last of the latchkey kids, here.” She raised her hands in a little wave, and Dani reached over to give her a silent high five. It got her another smile, so she counted it as a win.

“Sometimes things came up that were genuinely more important than a third grade open house. It took me a while to be okay with that, because I was a little late figuring out I wasn’t the center of the universe, but I get it. We all get along fine now, better than a lot of families.” Allison gave her a pointed look, and yeah, that was fair.

“Hey, I’m just checking,” she said. “Tell me you wouldn’t feel worried if you saw Sophie crying all by herself.”

“At a public event, in a school filled with teachers and her friends and their parents, in a town she’d lived in her whole life?”

She gave a short laugh. “Well, when you put it that way…”

Allison glanced towards the living room. “Look, I’d still worry. You’re right, and I appreciate it. My eight-year-old self especially appreciates it. But I cried a lot when I was a kid, so if you wind up in my past again, don’t get too upset if I’m in tears, okay? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong.”

“Is this like how you cry when the Thanksgiving commercials come on tv?” she asked.

Allison balled up her napkin and threw it at her. “Ha ha. Like I’m the only one. I see you over there wiping your eyes when they show the puppy running through the snow.”

“Hey, that’s a very touching story. I do have one more question, actually.” She tried to look serious again, and Allison raised her eyebrows. “Do you still have that unicorn poster?”

Allison laughed. “I’m pretty sure I do, actually. I loved that poster! I should frame it; that surreal hyper-saturated look is coming around again, right?” Dani threw the napkin back at her. “I’m serious!”

“As long as it doesn’t go in the living room,” she said. “I’m exercising my veto power. Maybe by the door, to scare away people trying to sell things.”

Allison nodded, and she figured it was even odds whether she’d actually come in one day to see a framed unicorn poster by the door. “It could work. Which reminds me, I don’t think you need to worry about disrupting the timeline too much. You said I invited you in, right? That must be how you were able to walk in later, that first Halloween. You’d already been here.”

It made perfect sense, as long as she didn’t think about it too carefully. “So you think this is one of those ‘everything we do in the past we’ve already done’ kinds of time travel? That’s the good kind, right?” She hoped it was the good kind.

“Well, from a philosophical standpoint, it raises a lot of difficult questions about free will and pre-destination, but from the standpoint of not wanting to irredeemably alter our reality as we know it through our interactions with the past — yes, it’s the good kind.” She frowned, and pulled a page of notes out from under a stack of books on the table. “There is still the possibility that all of it is imaginary, and you were able to get into the house for some entirely unrelated reason, but that’s looking less likely.”

“I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention during research time,” Dani said. “That was a possibility?”

Allison showed her the paper. “We were brainstorming while you were gone. Like I said, it’s looking less likely.”

She scanned the notes. It was quite a list. “Number five just says ‘aliens,’” she said.

“There was more to it. I summarized. I’m sure Sophie can tell you all about it at breakfast.”

“Is that your way of saying we should try to get some sleep?”

“Yes.”

It was a good idea, but she shook her head. “I’m still buzzing from everything — you go, I’ll get the dishes. I promise not to do any research or touch the watch until at least tomorrow.”

 

*In which breakfast is the most important meal of the day**

“So if Bunny’s an alien, then there could be lots of aliens, all over!” Sophie waved her spoon, probably to emphasize just how many aliens she thought there might be.

“Mm-hmm,” Cupcake said. She was clearly familiar with the alien theory already.

Dani wrapped her hands around her hot chocolate to keep from trying to take the spoon away. Sophie wasn’t using it to eat; they could just put it back in the drawer. (Yogurt and a peanut butter sandwich — you’d think a spoon would be necessary, but Allison had cut the sandwich into strips and Sophie was dipping them into the yogurt like it was jam. Which was gross, but at least she was eating. She was pretty sure she’d gone through a phase where she would only eat dry cereal at that age, and they didn’t exactly have unlimited food options on hand.)

“Back up — the Easter Bunny is an alien?”

“Yup!” Sophie beamed at her. “And Pitch is an alien too. Which is why I should definitely go with you next time, because there could be other aliens and I could help.”

“No.” Binx didn’t bother opening his eyes; he claimed he was sleeping, but she thought it was more likely he was counting on her lap to be both warm and close to the food.

“I agree with Binx,” Allison said. “Just because things went okay the first time doesn’t mean we have everything figured out.”

“I can help,” Sophie insisted.

“Nobody is saying you couldn’t,” Dani said. “But we don’t even really know what we’re trying to do. And you have your own quest that you’re working on. Trying to get Pitch to come back is already a lot.”

“He’s still not answering,” Cupcake said. “I’m on phone duty today. Interesting facts or funny jokes every hour.”

“Are you trying to annoy him into showing up?” It wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever heard. Possibly in the top ten, though.

Cupcake just shrugged. “If that’s what works.”

By the time the breakfast things had mostly been cleared away, Allison was already spreading out lists on the table. “First, we need to talk about scheduling. If we’re all doing this together, we need to work around your classes, and — whatever it is that you’re doing, Sophie.”

“Independent study on how myths and legends make a difference in our lives today,” Sophie replied, which was such a wildly understated description of what she was doing that Dani almost choked on her hot chocolate.

“That, yes,” Allison said, pointing at her. “After that, we’re going to talk about how long is too long to leave someone in a different time. I came up with some ideas to either pull you back here or send one of us to you; we should probably decide which one to try first.”

“Um, guys? It looks different this morning.” Cupcake was looking at the pocket watch. True to her word, she hadn’t touched it the night before — hadn’t even really noticed it since they got back to the present. Cupcake was right, though.

“It’s not glowing,” she said.

“Is it broken?”

“Maybe it only glows on the first one.”

“Maybe we had a time limit and we were supposed to do all of them at once.”

She actually had to sit on her hands to keep from reaching out and opening it, just to check. Binx gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking, which he probably did. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s take a step back. It’s just as likely that it has to recharge in between trips, or it’s making sure we don’t get unstuck in time and lose our anchor to the present.”

“Can that really happen?” Cupcake asked.

She shrugged. “I have no idea. Why was a pocket watch glowing in the first place? It’s magic — it probably has rules, but it didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”

“We should check to see if it’s working,” Sophie said.

Allison handed her a pack of fuzzy sticks. “Here; it likes these. Who knows, maybe it’s just waiting for some craft time. No one is opening it until we figure some of these things out. So — plans first, then we’ll check to see if it’s working.”

It wasn’t. They made their plans, color coded schedules and all, and agreed that ending a trip early through magic was probably more likely to break the terms of the deal that sending extra people back to help. Her backpack was a lot more full the second time around. With Binx once again on her shoulders, she opened the pocket watch and braced her knees.

Nothing happened. “Well,” Allison said. “I guess that answers that question.”

“What do we do now?” Cupcake asked.

“Wait and see if it starts glowing again, and try again later.”

“It will,” Binx predicted. “They always do.”

Cupcake nodded, like that made perfect sense to her. “If we’re not doing this right now, I should probably go to class. Sophie?”

“Library!” Sophie said, already running to get her things.

Cupcake gave the watch a little pat and pushed the fuzzy sticks closer to it. “What are you guys going to do? More research?”

“I will be sleeping,” Binx said. “For twelve to sixteen hours, which is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for sleeping.”

She patted his ears so he knew she was listening, and looked at Allison. “Probably grocery shopping,” Allison said.

Definitely grocery shopping. They were out of bread. And cheese — how did they run out of cheese? Having guests at a few meals had really thrown off their usual schedule. “I have things for the list. We need Halloween candy too, unless you got some already. I’ll be on laundry and cleaning.”

Cupcake’s expression was a story in and of itself, and Dani smiled. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? One minute it’s time travel and magic, and the next it’s measuring detergent and changing the vacuum cleaner bag.”

“How do you switch back and forth?”

“I guess I don’t think of it as switching. It’s like what Binx was saying that night at the library — he’s not Thackery sometimes and Binx sometimes, he’s always himself. Sometimes Allison is a witch doing magic, and sometimes she’s a witch doing the grocery shopping, but she’s always Allison. It’s the same with me. Whether I’m here or somewhere else, I’m still me. And you’d be surprised how much crossover there is between adventuring and just day to day living.”

“Not that surprised,” Cupcake said. “We got a crash course in the whole ‘seeing magic in our everyday lives’ thing. Sophie’s friends with the Easter Bunny, and I have a dreamsand unicorn that keeps showing up at night.”

It was a fair point. She couldn’t even quite imagine what that must have felt like — seeing the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost in person had been startling enough. “You’re right — and can I just say that was must have been amazing. Way cooler than almost having your life force sucked out by witches, definitely. But the reverse is also true. There’s a lot of ordinary in magic.”

“Like how Tooth always wants us to brush our teeth and floss?” Cupcake said, making a face.

She nodded. “Exactly. Or how even when we do things like time travel we still make sure everyone’s shoes are tied, and check the mail when we get back. It’s all part of the same life.”

It wasn’t helping, or she wasn’t answering whatever Cupcake was really trying to ask. “Look,” she said. “And I hate to say this, but I think it actually does get a little easier as you get older. I know that sounds trite, but it’s kind of true. The more things you see and experience, first you figure out how complex and complicated everything is, and then you figure out how much everything is connected and it starts to get simpler again. I mean, so far, at least. It’s a work in progress.”

“I guess. I just —“ Cupcake looked behind her, like she was checking if anyone else was listening. “I worry about — growing up, I guess, aging out of belief. What if I stop being able to see them?”

It wasn’t anything she hadn’t wondered herself, dozens of times. “You’re stuck with us,” Dani told her. “I can promise you that, at least. I know what you mean, though. But you count on yourself to be able to recognize when something magical is happening, and you count on your friends to remind you if you forget. What else can we do?”

Cupcake gave her a look that only a teenager could manage. “Magically soul-bond yourself to a talking cat-ghost?”

“Well, there is that.”

 

*In which they really should have expected this**

It took four days for the pocket watch to start glowing again. They were all starting to get restless, and she was already calculating out eight trips with a similar time frame and having real concerns about just how long it was going to take. Maybe they wouldn’t have to do all eight? Allison seemed sure that Max was as safe as could be reasonably expected, but it was hard to say if she was actually using magic to figure that out or just trying to be comforting.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked.

Binx yawned, and Sophie giggled. “Always,” he said. “Did you remember a flashlight this time?”

“Flashlight, check. Water, snacks, compass, extra socks. I think we’re good.”

Allison handed her a piece of paper. “Last time it took you about six hours. If you’re not back after that, we’ll try to get a message to go back and forth. If that doesn’t work, we’ll send you some backup. If there’s an emergency, use this.”

They’d gone over the plan already. Many times. She took the paper and put her other hand over Allison’s. “We’ve been over this, I’ve got it, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m going to worry. It’s part of the stay-behind master plan. Step one: worry.” She took a deep breath. “Just be careful, okay?”

She squeezed her hand. “Good news, that’s part of the time travel master plan. Step one: be careful.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe that for a second. More like ‘step one: what’s that over there?’ But thank you anyway. Good luck.”

“Good luck!” Sophie and Cupcake were in stereo on either side of her, and she waved.

“Thanks. You know, we’re going to feel really silly if I open this and nothing happens.”

She opened the watch.

She felt the trip, the second time, and didn’t manage to keep her feet under her when it spit them out on the other side. “Well,” she said, pushing herself up from the dirt. “Something happened.”

“Oh no,” Binx said.

“What?” She looked around sharply, but she couldn’t see anything but standard forest. “What is it?”

“Not good,” he said. “Look.” He was staring at a tree.

It looked like a tree. “Okay. What am I looking at?”

“That’s my initials. This is my past.”

They were lower than she’d expected, but once she was looking for them, she could see the freshly carved ’T.B.’ “You even did the periods. Nice. Come on, you don’t want to see you as a kid?”

“I’m shorter,” Binx said. “Not much to see there. I’m much more concerned about you getting hanged as a witch.”

“What? No one’s going to think I’m a witch.” As soon as she said it she realized that yes, that’s probably exactly what they would think. A single woman with a cat — it wasn’t an enormous leap even in present-day Salem; it wouldn’t even be a question at this point in time. She even had a magic spell in her pocket, just to really drive the point home.

Binx seemed to have the same idea. “Your clothes, the way you talk, trust me when I say no one is going to believe you’re just a regular traveler from out of town.”

“Right, okay, what do we do?”

“Too late. Someone’s coming.” Thackery appeared next to her, looking worried. “Act natural, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Of course, then he disappeared. Act natural, huh? She heard something crashing through the underbrush, and a boy tumbled into the clearing. “Pardon me,” he said, brushing himself off. “Hast thou seen Thackery come this way?”

Thackery appeared behind him, and shook his head. “No,” she answered, hoping that’s what he meant.

The kid was adorable, all curly hair and bare feet. He nodded, and then seemed to actually look at her for the first time. His eyes went wide.

“Hello,” she said.

He stared some more, and then sighed. “This way,” he said. “Thou will be looking for Mother, I suppose.”

She glanced at Thackery, who looked as confused as she felt. He nodded, though, so she said, “Yes.” That seemed safe enough. Hopefully.

He led her down what could only be called a path if someone was being extremely generous, and she stayed as far back as she thought she could get away with. “Who is that?” she whispered.

“I believe that’s Elijah,” Thackery said, just as quietly.

“And why is he taking me to his mom?”

“I have absolutely no idea. She often had visitors, or was out of town visiting others, but I don’t remember much more about her.”

She thought about that while she clambered over a fallen tree that Elijah had simply darted under. “So why I am following him?”

“It’s been a long time since I played in these woods every day. And we were neighbors.”

“So what you’re saying is you have no idea where we are, and you’re hoping this tiny child will lead us somewhere you recognize.”

There was silence for a few seconds, which she figured meant yes. Finally, he said, “I know where we were. And I know where we’re going. The memory of the path between them, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Hey,” she said softly, feeling like an idiot. He was genuinely worried, and she was making jokes. “You’re doing great. We’re going to figure this out, okay?”

“Of course.”

It sounded more like an automatic response than a genuine belief that they would prevail, but she didn’t get the chance to press. Elijah — if that’s who it really was — turned around and called, “It’s this way, nearly there now.”

Once they were over the crest of the hill, she could see the farms laid out in front of them. “Ours is that one.” The boy pointed to one of the closer buildings. He looked at her again and frowned. “If thou wouldst — wait here?”

He seemed uncertain that she would agree to the suggestion, but it made perfectly good sense to her. It would be just her luck to walk in on a prayer meeting, or a quilting bee, or whatever it was people did in this time while they weren’t farming. “Of course,” she said. She was still trying to figure out if she should use ‘thou’ or ‘thee’ to say ‘you go on ahead’ when he ran off towards the house.

“Thackery, what’s the difference between thee and thou?” she asked.

“They’re the subjective and objective forms,” he said absently, staring towards the farms. “And since I know your grammar lessons were sorely lacking — that means thou is used when ‘you’ is the subject of the sentence. ‘Thou are hiding in the forest.’ Thee is used when ‘you’ is the object of the sentence. ‘I hope no one sees thee hiding in the forest.’”

It made sense, in the way that she understood what he was saying but probably still couldn’t figure it out quickly enough to use it in a conversation. “Grammar isn’t static,” she said. “I do perfectly well by modern day standards.”

“Unfortunately, no one in this time knows what an emoji is, and anything unfamiliar to their sensibilities is likely to —“

“Get me hanged as a witch, yeah. What are you looking at?”

“I’m trying to place more exactly when we are. Allison said she remembered meeting you, in her past. If I can identify when we are, it might suggest a safe way of proceeding forward.”

She’d been thinking about that too, actually. “Have you considered that it might not be me?” she asked. “Or you? We’ve been thinking that we’re here to interact in some way with your past self, but maybe it’s something completely different. Elijah is Allison’s distant relative, after all. Maybe we’re here to see him.”

Of course, if that was the case, why would they still be there? “That instruction manual would be extremely welcome at this point,” Thackery said.  
  
“I’m just saying, if you don’t remember meeting me, what about meeting yourself? Or what about Emily — would she be born yet?” She looked around, wondering if Emily was going to show up. But maybe time travel was harder the longer you went, or maybe she was just unwilling to revisit her own past. Dani wasn’t exactly looking forward to going back in her own timeline, which it was looking more likely they were going to end up doing at some point.

“I’m — not sure.”

Wasn’t sure if Emily was born, or wasn’t sure if he’d ever met himself as a ghost? She didn’t have a chance to clarify before Elijah was running back up the hill towards them, and Thackery faded out of sight. “This way,” Elijah said. “Mother says thy presence would be most welcome.”

Was that good? She hoped it was good. Luckily he didn’t seem to be waiting for a reply, just turned around and headed towards the house. She took a deep breath and followed.

 

**In which the past is a foreign country**

Elijah’s mother took her appearance in stride. “Thou art a long way from home,” she said.

“Yes,” Dani told her, because that was certainly true.

“Thou art not here for the Circle.”

Uh-oh. The what? “No,” she said, after a brief internal debate.

“Dost thou intend any harm?”

“No.” That one was easy, at least.

She waited while Elijah’s mother studied her in silence for what felt like hours, but was probably only a minute or two. Finally, she said, “Dost thou have knowledge of the very young?”

She had no idea what the right answer was, and was startled enough to give something other than a yes or no reply. “Babies?” she guessed. “Not — extensively.”

Elijah’s mother gestured at her to follow, and they headed further into the house. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear a baby crying, and it seemed strange she hadn’t been able to before. A tiny — and angry — baby was thrust into her arms. “Sit with her,” Elijah’s mother said. “Quietly.”

Thackery appeared as soon as she left the room. “It’s Emily,” he said.

“Is she okay?” She looked flushed, but that could just be the crying.

“She’s just cranky. If this is when I think it is, our Mother and Father are away; they left us with Elijah’s family for an overnight trip and didn’t return for nearly a week. There was — a storm, or flooding, maybe. I remember Emily crying and crying.”

“Probably why you’re hiding out in the woods somewhere,” she guessed.

Thackery flushed, or as close to flushing as a ghost could get. “Not exactly. I’m running away from home.”

“What?” She tried to keep it quiet, not that she thought much of anything could be heard over the baby’s cries.

“I was a child! I was just going to go find our parents and tell them to come back. I’m sure it made sense at the time.” He wiggled his fingers in front of Emily’s face, and she abruptly went quiet.

It was like she could suddenly think again. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Please don’t stop doing that. So you ran away — then what happened? I assume you came back, at some point.”

Thackery hesitated. “I’m not going to like this, am I?” she said.

“Well.” He kept his eyes on Emily. “The good news is, I believe I’ve figured out what it is we came back to do. The bad news is that it involves me leaving so I can have a conversation with my younger self in the forest. At night.”

It took her a minute to get past the ‘leaving her with the crying infant’ and onto the ‘night’ part. “More than six hours, then,” she said.

“Yes. Not a lot more — I reached the first road marker just after dark, and had what I thought was a very odd dream shortly after that.”

“And that’s what made you decide to turn around and come back?”

“It was extremely convincing.”

He was nodding, but he didn’t look as confident as his words sounded. “Do you — remember what you said?”

“Not a single thing.”

“Okay.” Emily giggled in her arms, and she couldn’t help smiling. “Hey there, baby. Check it out, it’s your big bro.” Emily made a grab for Thackery’s fingers, and giggled again when her hand went right through his. Both of them looked enchanted — probably not the best word choice for their current situation, but true nonetheless.

“I don’t want to fail her,” Thackery said finally. The ‘again’ lingered at the end of the sentence, unspoken but still uncomfortably present.

“You won’t. You didn’t.” It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know, but there was a difference between knowing something hundreds of years after anything could be done about it, and knowing something in the moment it was actually happening. They both watched Emily for another minute in silence, and her eyes drooped slowly shut.

“Not to change the subject,” she said quietly. “But what do we think is going to happen when the six hour mark passes?” Allison had been vague on how the ‘send a message’ part of the plan was actually going to work. “What kind of message do you think she was talking about?”

“I’m more concerned about what happens if it doesn’t work, and one of the others actually shows up here.” He frowned. “Also about why Elijah’s mother left my baby sister with a stranger he found in the forest.”

“We really have no idea what we’re doing, do we?” she said.

“Not really, no. And yet it we’ve made it this far.”

They sat together until the sun started to go down, and it was time for Thackery to go. “Be careful,” she said.

“I should be the one saying that to you,” he said.

“We’ll both be careful, and we’ll meet up when you’re done. We’re not going anywhere without you.” She held out her fist. “You ready?”

He smiled, and reached out closed enough so she could feel the tingle of a ghostly fist bump. “Always.”

The baby woke up when he disappeared, and gave her a wary look. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re stuck with just me for now.”

“Not for long.” She jumped at the sound of Emily’s voice behind her, and the baby made a noise like she was thinking about crying again but hadn’t quite decided yet.

Emily hurried forward. “Shh, no crying, baby me. Ooh, look, I’m all squinchy-faced; that’s not very cute at all.”

“She liked this when Thackery did it,” Dani said, demonstrating the finger wiggle.

Emily repeated the movement, and the baby waved delightedly. “Huh,” she said. “That was easier than I expected.”

“Not that I’m not happy to see you — both of you — but… ?” She let it trail off. She thought there was probably a limit on the number of times you could ask someone ‘what are you doing here?’ before it became too many.

“It’s been six hours in the present. A little less, maybe; there didn’t seem to be much point in waiting once Allison explained everything,” Emily said. “I’m the message. Hi, everyone’s worrying about you guys, no surprise there.”

She shushed the baby again, then explained, “It’s really important that she stays quiet. Not a good time to draw attention, if you know what I mean.”

“Not really, no.”

“Thackery didn’t tell you?” Emily looked surprised, and then rolled her eyes. “Wait, he doesn’t even know, does he? Elijah’s mother is — witch-adjacent, I guess is what you call it. She has a group here now; they don’t know about you, or the baby.”

That must be what the circle was that she’d mentioned. “Are they dangerous?”

Emily shrugged. “Are you dangerous? We all could be, under the right circumstances. Elijah’s mother trusts them to keep their word and leave in peace, but she’s not sure how extra variables might change that. So we’re just going to be very quiet and everything will be fine.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Luckily, Emily didn’t seem offended by the question. “Some of it I knew before — like about Elijah’s mom, that’s because girls were expected to spend a lot more time indoors than boys, and as long as I was out of sight the grown-ups tended to talk like I wasn’t there. Our parents used to argue about it sometimes, how she helped witches. The other things are mostly from other ghosts. We network.”

It was an interesting mental image. And she couldn’t for sure say it wasn’t true, even though she’d never heard of it happening before. “Networking is a ghost thing now, like haunting?”

“Sure, why not? It’s the twenty-first century. I mean, not here, but usually.”

There was a soft sigh from the baby, and they both looked at her. “I think she’s asleep again,” Dani said.

Emily closed her eyes, and then leaned down close to give the baby a kiss on the forehead. Then she said, “You should probably put her down. Thackery should be almost done by now. And Allison says that you probably can’t mess up the timeline too badly, which I’m pretty sure means that anything he says to himself is what he already said, and it worked.”

She gave the blanket an extra couple pats once the baby was settled. “Do you think we’ll all have to be next to each other again for the watch to take us back?”

 

**In which Dani learns about their next challenge and takes a nap**

“You’re back!”

Emily winked at her when they re-appeared in the present. The return trip was a lot smoother, so she saw the wink while she was still on her feet, instead of on the floor. “Nope. Catch you later, everyone. Go team.”

Thackery had showed up right next to her. “Was that Emily?”

“Yeah.” She yawned — time travel was tiring. She’d slept for almost twelve hours once she’d finally wound down after the last one. “Turns out she was Allison’s message. Or messenger. Both. We sat with the baby — everything go okay on your end?”

He winced. “Let’s just say it wasn’t my most inspiring oration. I think I’m glad I didn’t remember it.” He looked around. “Wasn’t Cupcake just here?”

“I thought so.”

She looked around too, like they might have just missed her, even though the room really wasn’t that big, and then they heard her yelling in the hallway. “Allison, they’re back!” She ran back into the room, sliding to a stop on her socks. “Hi, welcome back. How’d it go?”

“If we’re interpreting the thematic goal of the deal correctly, along with how our achievement of that goal is reflected in the actions of a magical device of unknown origin, then our presence in this time indicates success.”

She and Thackery exchanged a glance. “So — good, we think,” she clarified. “What’s going on here?”

“Jack came by and he said there’s a big storm coming, so we’re getting ready.”

It was amazing how an answer could be so concise, and yet leave her with so many more questions than she’d started with. Allison walked in at a much calmer pace, which was at least somewhat reassuring. “Welcome back,” she said, echoing Cupcake’s earlier greeting. “Sorry we weren’t all here to greet you. Sophie’s on the phone with Jamie and her parents, but she says hi too.”

“I’m going to go check on her,” Cupcake said, and she was off again. Dani wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her having so much fun.

“It’s fine,” she said. “We weren’t expecting a welcoming committee. Jack was here?”

Allison dropped into one of the chairs, which she figured meant there was no actual emergency, regardless of the running and the shouting. “Like ten minutes ago, yeah. That’s why we’re all a little scattered. Big storm coming, lots of wind — the news has been talking about it a little, but Jack said it’s going to be worse than they’re saying, and he would know.”

She kicked her shoes off and sat on the sofa, Binx joining her seconds later. “Crisis level?”

Allison waved a hand back and forth. “We’re probably not getting flooding or icing, so that’s good. Mostly it’s the wind that will be the problem — there could be a lot of branches and trees down, possible power outages. I was checking the generator; we need more gas.”

They hadn’t exactly gotten around to the winter checklist, so that made sense. “Not to sound ungrateful for the heads up, but doesn’t Jack Frost have a significant influence on cold weather patterns?”

“I asked that too,” Allison said, making a face. “Climate change. He can’t get rid of the storm without causing more problems. He could send it somewhere else, but that has its own set of rules and issues. He did promise to keep any trees from falling on the house.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Right? Small favors. Certainly not going to turn it down. We should bring in — probably everything, though.”

She could feel her eyes getting heavier. “How long do we have?”

“At least a day. Plenty of time for you to get some sleep, if you want.”

"I'm not tired," she lied, and then yawned again.  "That was smart, sending Emily.  She got to see herself as a baby.  Babies like ghosts, did you know that?"  She realized her eyes were closed, and quickly opened them again.

"Mm-hmm.  Sure you're not tired.  How far apart did you get?"

She should've known Allison would catch on to that.  It was a side effect they hadn't quite figured out yet -- and Binx was already pretending to be asleep, so there was no help from that direction.  "A ways.  It was important; we're fine."  

Allison's expression didn't exactly look convinced.  "It always is.  Get some rest; we'll wake you up if we need you." 

She dozed off almost immediately, feeling safe and warm.  It wasn't quiet -- the sounds of the household going through the daily routine floated in and out of her consciousness.  Someone draped a blanket over her, and she tucked her feet under it.  At one point she was pretty sure Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny were arguing about Sophie and Pitch somewhere nearby, but that might have been a dream.  She wondered if he'd texted back yet.  If he was ever going to.  What would happen if he just stayed on the moon.

She woke up to a crash in the hallway and someone calling out, "Sorry!  We're fine, nothing's broken!"

"Shh," someone else said.  "They're sleeping."

"We're awake," she called.  She poked Binx's paw.  "I can tell you're awake too, you know.  Don't give me that twelve to sixteen hours excuse."

He flicked his ear at her and kept his eyes closed.  "Check the internet; cats need a lot of sleep.  Google backs me up on this."

"I'm not sure google covers cats like you," she said.  "Are you sure you're not just making things up?"

He purred, and the rolled over to stretch and shake himself all over.  "What did we miss?  Lunch, it feels like."

The fact that they kept winding up at a different time of day when they time traveled was really throwing off her internal clock, but lunch was a good suggestion.  You could really eat it at almost any time of day.  "Sounds good.  First step, food.  Second step, figure out the second step."

She'd forgotten that there were people out in the hallway, but they found Cupcake and Sophie both stacking lawn chairs inside the front door.  (Cupcake was stacking them, anyway.  Sophie was sitting on top of a stack of four chairs, legs swinging.  She wondered how in the world they'd ended up with so much lawn furniture.  It was Massachusetts, for goodness sakes; they only had something like three enjoyable lawn months a year.  Were their neighbors secretly dumping excess lawn furniture in the backyard at night?)

"Hey," she said.

"You're up!" Sophie said.  "Do you want sandwiches?  We made a lot.  There's peanut butter, and jelly, and cheese.  Allison's in the kitchen."  Hopefully Allison was making sure those three ingredients didn't all end up on the same sandwich.  

"And tuna?" Binx asked.

"Is that Dani?" Allison called.  "There's grilled cheese if you want it."

"Yes please!" she called back.  Seriously, the house wasn't that big.  Why were they yelling?  And -- now that she was thinking about it -- why were they putting all the furniture from the backyard in the front hall, instead of closer to the back door? 

They all trooped into the kitchen together, because surely those questions would be easier to answer on a full stomach.  "Tuna for me," Binx said happily.  He leapt easily onto the counter, where was already a plate waiting for him.  

He said it was easier to focus on the moment when he was a cat, and she tried to follow his example.  In the moment things were good, and they might as well enjoy them.  "And cheese for me," she said.  "Allison is my new favorite."  

"I cooked, you clean," Allison said.  "Sophie's my new favorite -- she introduced me to the jelly sandwich."

"Just jelly is the best," Sophie agreed.  "That's my favorite."

Everyone looked at Cupcake.  "Do I have to pick a favorite now too?" she said.  "I'll go with whatever school administrator decided to cancel classes for Monday already.  Hero of my day, for sure."  

"Here, here," Allison said.  "To heroes and sandwiches.  Let's eat."

 

**In which the storm leads to an unexpected message**

Storm prep took over the next twenty-four hours.  The watch stayed non-glowing, Pitch stayed silent, and the rest of them ate a truly unnecessary amount of Halloween candy.  Cupcake and Sophie agreed to move in until the storm had passed -- she was pretty sure it was the lure of the generator more than anything else -- and they brought with them plenty of batteries in trade for the rapidly dwindling candy supply. 

When the winds started picking up, they gathered in the living room. A gust shook the windows in their frames, and they all jumped. Sophie inched closer to Cupcake, who was tucked into the corner of the sofa.

“At least it’s not snowing,” Allison said. “I’m not ready for snow.”

She looked up from the latest weather alert chiming through on her phone. “I’m not sure I was ready for this. When the weather report said 'strong wind,' I guess I was thinking more 'it'll be pretty windy.’ I was definitely not thinking 'apocalyptic gales.'"  

Cupcake laughed, and Allison said, “I’ll bet you three peanut butter cups that a reporter calls it a gale-pocalypse at some point this week."

“I’m not sure we’re going to have any peanut butter cups left for you to pay up with by the time the week’s over,” she said. “We should probably figure out what the town is going to do about trick or treat so we know if we need to get more candy.” Allison looked a little shifty at that, and she narrowed her eyes. “Unless someone secretly hid an extra candy stash so we wouldn’t be able to eat it early. Allison.”

“Dani, we always eat the candy too fast and run out! Every year! And then last year we didn’t have time to get back to a store because we had that thing, and we wound up having to hand out random snacks that we had in the cupboards. I promised the neighbor’s kids we’d do better this time.”

There was a secret candy stash. Of course there was. “So we’ve been rationing for nothing?” She held up both hands. “No, hang on. Look, it was a good plan. One hundred percent. And under normal circumstances you would totally be winning the Official Grown Up Accomplishment Trophy for it. But these aren’t normal circumstances. We’re in the middle of the gale-pocalypse here. We need to pool our resources if we’re going to get through this, and that means no candy hoarding.”

Allison sighed. “Fine. But you’re explaining it to those kids when they end up with granola bars again.”

“You got it,” Dani told her. “I’m on trick or treat duty, check.”

Cupcake raised her hand. “Do you really have an Official Grown Up Accomplishment Trophy?”

“Yes we do,” Allison said. “We trade it back and forth whenever one of us does something particularly responsible. It started as a joke, but it’s fun, so we kept it going.”

The lights went out. They’d been expecting it for long enough that it was — almost — a non-event. Four cellphone screens lit up around the rom. “Everyone okay? I’ll go switch over to the generator.” It wouldn’t power the whole house, but they could get lights back, at least.

Binx jumped down to follow, and they were halfway out the door when a phone alert buzzed. “It’s not mine. Who’s phone is that?” Allison asked.

“Not me,” she said.

Sophie and Cupcake were both staring at a phone sitting between them. They each already had a phone in their hands. “Wait, is that—?”

“It’s the Pitch phone!” Sophie said.

Wow. Okay, so Pitch Black was texting them now. Not ominous at all. Or, she supposed, it could be a wrong number. Allison must have been thinking the same thing. “Well, is it him?” she asked.

Sophie picked up the phone. “I think so,” she said slowly. “I don’t know. It says ‘Current meteorological conditions are severe. Do advise as to your situation.’ What does that mean?”

Cupcake translated — “’The weather’s bad, are you okay?’” and Sophie brightened.

She narrated back as she typed. “’We are all fine here, thank you. How are you?’”

They all waited, but if he was going to send anything back, he apparently wasn’t going to do it quickly. “Was that good? I mean, two-way communication, that has to be good, right?”

“I guess,” Sophie said. “We’re going too slow, though. He’s never going to be back in time for Halloween.”

Since that was only a few days away, it did seem unlikely. “I thought Halloween was just when you thought he was most likely to want to come back. Maybe it will just take a little longer?” Cupcake and Sophie looked like it was more serious than that, and she was starting to think they’d failed to share some key element of their situation. They looked at each other, and yep — that was definitely the ‘there’s something else’ look.

“You might as well tell us,” Binx said. “We’re all in it together now anyway.”

“Well.” Cupcake looked at Sophie again. “Remember when we said Pitch had made nightmares?”

She thought back -- was it really only a few weeks ago that they'd met?  It felt longer, somehow.  "Pitch Black, dreamsand, nightmares, unicorn -- that part?" she said.

"Yeah," Cupcake said.  "Mostly the nightmares part.  Pitch sort of -- gave them life?  Or they may have figured that out on their own, because he kind of wasn't really in control of them by the end.  And they're still around even now that he's left, and they're, well.  They're multiplying."

"That -- sounds bad," Allison said.  It didn't sound awful.  Not ideal, certainly.  She was pretty sure they'd handled worse things than that.

And then Cupcake added, "And they travel in packs.  Herds, I guess?  Also they've started to be able to impact the physical world."

"Oh, now it sounds much worse," Binx said.

"We think they might get stronger on Halloween," Sophie said, just to really pile on the problems.  

"I still think they might get weaker," Cupcake offered.  "Because people are scaring themselves on purpose.  But we don't really know."

Allison looked like she was counting to ten, or possibly a hundred.  Binx had his paws over his head.  

"Is that everything?" Dani asked,  because someone had to, even if she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.  

"Yes," Sophie said immediately.

"Maybe," Cupcake added.  

"I don't mind it," Sophie told her.  

Cupcake put her hands on her hips.  "I do.  And we should tell them anyway."

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Sophie nodded.  "Fine."  

"So, we can see them.  The nightmares, I mean.  And it doesn't seem like you guys can?  But we're not sure if we can see them because they're following us, or if they're everywhere and we can just see them because we can see them.  And we're not sure which would be worse."

Allison managed to sort through that explanation the fastest.  "Wait, you can see them here?  Right now?"

"Well, not right now," Cupcake said, and Dani breathed a sigh of relief until she added, "All the lights are off; I can't really see anything."

Binx leaned against her legs, and she reached down to pick him up.  "Okay.  We're okay here."  It was more to reassure herself than anyone else, but Allison nodded and gestured for her to come closer.  

"All right, everyone bring it in, huddle up," Allison said.  "First off, thank you for being truthful with us.  It's really important to make sure we all have the same information so that we're all making smart choices."

Dani cleared her throat.  "You're using your play group voice on us, just a heads up."  Allison volunteered with a kids theater group off and on, and her 'I'm talking with very small children who have very little reason to listen to me' voice was unmistakeable.

Allison reached out for her shoulder.  "Sorry.  That's where I have to be at my most non-panicking; it was instinct."  

She could feel Binx laughing in her arms, so she said, "No, it's fine, I just thought you should know.  I feel calmer already.  Once we're done with the group hug, I think we should probably get the generator turned on next.  Deal with the immediate situation first, figure everything else out later."

"I vote yes," Cupcake said.  "If we're voting."

Sophie giggled.  At least one of them was having fun.  "I vote yes too."

"Right.  I vote yes too.  We'll come with you," Allison said, which was a great show of solidarity but not entirely practical, because there were five of them and the generator was outside in the garden shed.  

They stopped at the door.  It was very nice for a garden shed, but not what anyone would call spacious.  "On second thought, we'll wait here," Allison said.  "And cheer you on."

 

**In which Halloween comes and goes**

“I think they’re growing on me.”  She surveyed the front lawn, and felt only a mild foreboding at the sight of a half dozen nightmares placidly nibbling at the grass.  That was an improvement , right?  “The little ones are kind of cute.”

“Mmm,” Binx said.  His tail twitched.  “I think our definitions of ‘little’ are vastly different when I’m this size.  They don’t seem too interested in terrorizing the populace, or sowing fear and discord, or whatever else they might be capable of.”

It was true.  Allison had been up most of the night figuring out how to make the nightmares visible to them.  (A ritual. Somehow it always turned out to be a ritual.  It could never be something easy, like a rune, or a blessing.)  And then they’d spent the morning sending out the information to the rest of the assorted witches, supernatural creatures, and magic-adjacent beings they were on decent terms with to find out if they were able to see the same thing.  They were— and like Cupcake, she wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

Allison had fallen asleep on the sofa some time in the afternoon, along with Sophie, who kept insisting she didn’t mind seeing them anyway, and didn’t know why they were making such a big deal about it.  “There are more of them than there were earlier,” Cupcake said, joining them on the porch.  

“Yeah.  It may be the magic attracting them.  We’ve got reports from a few different places of sightings, and all of them are seeing more of them clustered around magical places or people.”  She looked at Cupcake.  “You said Pitch created them?  What did they do then?”

“I mostly remember them being scary.  I’m not sure if they were creating fear, or feeding on it.  Bunny says they can sense it, but they usually disappear when he’s around, and they avoid Jack even more.”  She shrugged.  “We don’t exactly have a long list of magical resources to check with.”

“Well, you do now,” Dani told her firmly.  Unfortunately, all of those resources had decided that if Allison was going to ask about the nightmares, she must be planning to deal with them.  They’d gotten more complaints than she’d expected.  They hadn’t heard of anybody being hurt by them, thank goodness, but once you could see them, they weren’t subtle.  A few of the lower-profile beings weren’t reacting well to their presence and/or hiding spots being so blatantly revealed.  The nightmares were like a big sign saying, ‘Hey, there’s magic over here!’

Cupcake took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Thanks.  Really, we appreciate it.”

“Do you think Pitch will come back and take them off our hands?”

“I think they’re his yetis,” Cupcake said.

Wait, what?  “What?” she said.  “You lost me.”

“Yetis,” Cupcake repeated, which was less than helpful.  She kept going, though, gesturing broadly at the yard.  “It’s a Guardian thing.  North has these yetis; they make the toys and guard the workshop and stuff.  And Pitch is like the balance of North, so he probably has something too.  Like the nightmares.”

She tried to move past ‘yetis’ and stay on topic. “You think Santa Claus and the Bogeyman balance each other?”

“It makes sense,” Cupcake insisted.  “They’re like Jack and Bunny — winter and spring — they’re opposites but we need them both.  North is wonder, Pitch is consequences.  We might like one better than the other, but they’re still both important.”

She supposed it did make a certain amount of sense.  “Wouldn’t that mean that the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy were opposites too?”  That made — less sense.

“Not if their opposites just haven’t become Guardians yet,” Cupcake said.  “Bunny’s been around for ages and Jack wasn’t even Jack Frost until a few hundred years ago.  We think that’s why he doesn’t have anything like these yet.  Maybe they come with time.”

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” she said, and Cupcake nodded.

“We didn’t have much else to do except talk about it, for a while.  We still keep in touch.”

She wondered if that would have made a difference for her and Max.  If they’d kept talking about it, instead of pretending it didn’t happen.  Max never wanted to talk about anything back then, especially magic, and she’d been so focused on Binx being gone (and then not being gone) that she hadn’t pushed as much as she could have.  Then again, their parents still wouldn’t talk about whatever happened after they left the Halloween party that night, so maybe it was just genetic.

She looked up when Allison joined them on the porch, yawning.  “The watch is glowing again.”

“Do you think we should try to go tonight?”  They’d been focused on the nightmares, and cleaning up from the storm, but they could still squeeze in some time travel.  

“Oh no,” Allison said.  “I seem to remember someone saying they would be on trick or treat duty.  You’re not getting out of it that easy.  I’ll go this time; I think we have the emergency return plans worked out well enough that I don’t need to be here for them.”

Right.  Trick or treat.  Well, volunteering for that had seemed like a good idea at the time.  “The Groundhog’s deal is with me and Binx, though,” she pointed out.  “Maybe it won’t work if it’s you.”

“I’ll take that chance.  I’m pretty sure the Groundhog would agree with me on the subject of handling out candy.”

She made a face.  It wasn’t the candy part that got to her —it was fun to see what kids came up with every year, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have good memories of trick or treat herself.  She just didn’t remember the adults spending so much time talking.  It was going to be three hours of questions about the weather, and the storm, and how things weren’t the same as they were in the old days, and by the end she’d be encouraging the conspiracy theorists just to avoid yet another question about why she and Allison were ‘living in that big house all by themselves.’

“You promised,” Allison said.  “Besides, it seems likely that this trip will be about you, and since you helped me, it’s only fair that I do this one.”

She had, and it was.  And it wasn’t like any of them were actually experienced time travelers; two trips hardly made her an expert.  “You’re right.  I’ll take trick or treat, you take the time travel.  You shouldn’t go alone, though.”

Allison nodded.  They’d roughed out a basic buddy system as part of the rescue contingency plans.  “Cupcake?  Want to try out some time travel?”

She did.  Sophie worked hard to hide her disappointment about not going, but Emily showing up and offering to take her trick or treating eases the sting.  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Cupcake asked.  

“It’s Halloween,” Emily said.  “We can get away a lot this time of year.  People who realize I’m a ghost won’t question it, and people who don’t realize it will just think I have a really great costume.”

It sounded so reasonable when Emily said it, and yet -- if she went with the classic decision analysis tool...  She imagined having to explain the situation at the ER, or to the police, or to Sophie's parents.  "Yeah, no, that's not going to quite enough for the buddy system.  You need a corporeal buddy too."

"I think we should call Bunny," Cupcake said, and she felt the tingle on the back of her neck that meant they had company.

"Call me about what?" Bunny said.  He glared at the yard full of nightmares .  

"Will you go trick or treating with me and Emily?" Sophie asked.  

"Course I will," he said, and then hesitated.  "What's that, again?"

Sophie and Cupcake dragged him back inside to explain it to him, which she thought had probably been his goal all along.  There was no way didn't know what trick or treating was.  It was the biggest candy holiday of the year, the one keeping Easter from taking the top spot -- he knew about it, all right.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked Allison.  "So far we've always wound up here in Salem.  If that holds up, you're going to meet a me you've already met.  Could be weird."

"Weirder than you meeting yourself?"

She waved a hand.  "Probably not?"  

Allison leaned on the railing next to her.  "I wanted to ask, though.  Do you remember meeting any strangers who gave you helpful advice?  I know we said it would naturally work out the way it's supposed to, but it turns out that was easier when I was telling you guys about it than doing it myself."

As if she'd been thinking of anything else since Allison had announced she'd be doing this trip.  "We had just moved; everyone was a stranger."  

"Great; that's very  helpful, thank you."

She bumped her shoulder against Allison's.  "It'll be fine.  Just remember what you told me about the crying thing, okay?  It wasn't exactly my best year."

"Hey, I was there -- not sure any of us were really at our best.  Honestly, I'm sort of hoping my best is yet to come."

"Same."  

They watched the yard for another few minutes, but eventually they had to admit they were just stalling.  Allison let out a long breath, and said, "Okay.  Let's do this, then."

It didn't take long to get ready.  It was the silence after Allison and Cupcake opened the watch and disappeared that was the most startling.  "Is it always like that?" she asked.

"Yes," Sophie said.  And then, "Is it time to get my costume on now?"

The rest of the afternoon felt like a blur -- she took way too many pictures of Sophie in her carrot costume, and then distracted herself from eating candy by trying to set up the generator to run the outdoor lights.  (Unsuccessfully, but the candy bowls were still full when the kids started showing up.  And that's why they had battery-powered lanterns, right?)

At least the storm and lingering power outage took up the majority of the conversational space.  It certainly didn't reduce the number of kids — instead it seemed like there were more than ever. (Or possibly she’d made Allison handle trick or treat for the past two or three or five years, and had forgotten how many they usually got.) Binx retreated inside after a kid thought he was part of the decorations and tried to take a picture.

(“He was clearly moving! And breathing!” she’d said, and the kid had shrugged.

“I thought he was animatronic.”

“Who has an animatronic cat?”

“I don’t know; I thought you might. Everyone said you guys are weird.”)

Finally, though, the last stragglers trickled away. She stood up and stretched. A nightmare that couldn’t be much bigger than a doberman looked over when her spine popped, and she made a face at it. She said, “Oh, and I suppose you never get that noise, is that it?” It snorted and tossed its mane. “I see how it is.”

“Are we talking with them now?” Binx asked, delicately picking his way down the stairs and across the lawn. “New friends?” He stopped short of actually getting into the nightmare’s space, and they stared at each other for a few seconds. The nightmare nodded, and Binx nodded back.

“What was that all about?”

“You started it,” he said. “Come on, we’re about to hit the six hour mark, I want to see what happens.”

 

**In which Dani and Allison have a pre-breakfast conversation**

“Hey, Dani. You awake?”

She groaned, and pulled the covers over her head. “No.”

Allison kept talking anyway. “The power’s back on. I need to know where you put the manual for the generator so I can make sure I’m not going to catch it on fire or anything.”

“It’s —“ She had to think about it, and she could feel sleep starting to slip away. “On the end table with the lamp, I think. Near the sofa.”

Instead of going to find it, though, Allison sat down. She pulled the covers back down so she could look at her. “We don’t need to talk about it,” she said preemptively.

“I was concerned,” Allison said, and that wasn’t fair, using her own words against her so early in the morning.

“I told you it wasn’t my best year.” Allison had given a deliberately vague description of when exactly they’d jumped back to, and Cupcake hadn’t said anything at all, but it had been enough to remind her of when it must have been. “Everything hit me at once, after Halloween.” She’d been so sure, when Thackery had promised — but then he didn’t come back right away, and it had maybe gotten a little rough for a while.

“You helped, you know. I remember you sitting with me.”

“Oh yeah?”

She sat up all the way, and yawned. “Sorry. I remember you said that sometimes when you promise forever, it sticks in unexpected ways.”

“That worked?” Allison sounded surprised.

“Well, I didn’t believe you. Not for a second; I thought you were pulling a Rafiki on me. Or whatever we called that before that movie came out. But I was so absolutely determined to prove you wrong, and _that_ helped.”

“I’m glad,” Allison said.

“Me too,” Binx said, leaping onto the bed. “What are we talking about?”

“You,” Dani told him. “Sort of. Where’ve you been, anyway?”

He snuggled into the pillows. “In the yard. I think we should name the nightmares. I hope you agree, because I already started.”

She wondered if she could get away with going back to sleep if Binx was doing it too. Allison didn’t look like she was going anywhere anytime soon, though. “Okay, sure. Why are we naming them? Is this like a facing your fears thing?”

“They just like having names, I think,” Binx said.

That seemed logical enough. And really, it was a toss-up whether naming them would make them more real (potentially bad) or less unknown (potentially good), or if it would be both and the effects would cancel each other out. Allison nodded, but still made no move to leave.

“That makes sense,” Allison said. “I’m sure Sophie will be thrilled.”

Giving up on sleeping, at least for the moment, she poked Allison in the shoulder. “Was there something else? Because it seems like there must be something else.”

Allison nodded. “I’ve been looking ahead. Three time travel jumps is enough to give us a pattern. It could totally change, but if it keeps up like this, we might be finished before Thanksgiving. We’ll be cutting it close, though.”

She tried to figure out the math in her head — two trips a week, how many weeks until Thanksgiving? “How close?” she said. Mornings and math didn’t get along.

“If we keep going at this pace, and assuming we’re successful on every trip, and assuming that we get Max back as soon as we’re done with the eighth one — the weekend before the holiday.”

That was — not as close as she’d been thinking. “That sounds manageable. Right? I mean, we’re not hosting this year, so we’ll have to figure out travel, but we won’t need to clean the house or anything.”

"I'd like to think so, but it's not like we have any guarantees.  And I definitely don't want to try to do Thanksgiving without Max.  Your mom already started asking why he hasn't been posting anything online."

She hadn't thought of that.  Obviously he didn't have internet access, wherever he was.  "What did you tell her?"

Allison shrugged.  "I said I didn't know for sure, but he was probably just really busy. What else was I supposed to say?  'Sorry, we lost him somewhere in the time-stream, and we're working on a quest to get him back'?"

She winced.  "Probably not the best idea, no."  Her parents were still iffy on the whole magic thing.  It seemed like half the time they were on board with it, and the other half they thought it was all just part of Max's fantasy writing.  They were hardly the only people she knew who were so deliberately (and selectively) oblivious to things they didn't want to acknowledge, just the ones she was closest to.   It tended to make holidays a little challenging.

"Sophie's brother is covering for her with her parents, right?" Binx said.  "Maybe he can help."

"We'll ask -- are they still here?"  It was a little later in the morning than she'd expected.  If the power was back, they might have gone to check on the apartment.  Or to class, presumably.

"Sophie's downstairs," Allison confirmed.  "Eating breakfast.  Cupcake's going to pick her up after her morning class and they'll be at the library all afternoon."

"Sounds good.  Hang on, go back a minute.  Are we bringing anything to Thanksgiving?"

"Stuffing.  And ice cream, but that will be easy."  

"So we could make it early, and freeze it.  Can you freeze stuffing?"  They needed to start a list of these questions -- Jamie, stuffing...  "Do we have a list going?"

Allison had her phone out.  "We do now."

"Add a countdown, or something.  If it looks like we're not going to finish in time, we'll go back to the Groundhog.  I'm not above begging for a day pass, or whatever it would take to borrow Max back for a while.  We're not doing Thanksgiving without him, period."

"Here's my question," Allison said thoughtfully.  "If we've been traveling back only to this area, and we think it's focused on people who the Groundhog would associate with us, and we've already visited me, and Binx, and you -- what are the rest of the trips going to be?"

 

**In which chores are more exciting when they're a side quest**

The watch started glowing the next day.  "Well, that's one way to change things up,” she said.  They'd called an emergency meeting, but Cupcake's car wouldn't start, so she and Allison and Binx headed to the apartment.  It felt smaller than she remembered with all five of them there, and she was almost glad Emily hadn't turned up.  

"How much does this really change things?" Cupcake asked.  

Allison gave the watch a considering look.  She was their go-to for enchanted objects -- Dani and Binx tended to focus more on the ghosts and hauntings.  "It may not seem like much, but anything that changes the pattern could potentially have an impact.  Magical objects each tend to have their own set of tendencies."  

The watch glowed happily back at them, as if aware it was the topic of conversation.  Which it possibly was.  Allison said, "At first this one seemed like it was leaning towards the wildcard end of the spectrum -- I've certainly never seen anything else do that trick with the fuzzy sticks.  But then it was sticking to a pattern with the time jumps, and I thought maybe the arts and crafts thing was a fluke.  And now --" She waved a hand at the table.  "I have no idea.  Back to square one."

Sophie raised her hand.  "So are we opening it now, or not?  I want to tell Pitch."

“I hate to say this. But I have homework," Cupcake said.  

She looked at Allison.  It would be nice to speed up the timeline a little and give them a bigger cushion before the holiday.  But at the same time -- "We need groceries.  And we need to do laundry."  The generator didn't have enough power for everything in the house, and they had maybe let a few things slide while the electricity was out.  They could really use a chores day.

"So we're not opening it?" Sophie asked.  She sounded disappointed.

"We have to make sure we keep everything else going too," Allison said.  "That's part of the deal when you want to have magic in your daily life.  It means your daily life has to be part of the magic too."

It was an echo of the conversation she'd had with Cupcake -- probably because they'd talked about it themselves, more than once.  No one wanted to come back from consulting on a haunted library only to find their electricity was being turned off.  (Not that anything like that had ever happened to them. Not more than once, at least.)

Cupcake nodded.  "It's like a side quest," she said.  "Like when you have to go gather rocks, or build bridges and stuff, before you can keep going.  You have to build up points so that when you go back to the main quest you have enough resources."

That wasn't -- exactly how she would have put it, but it seemed to work for Sophie, who brightened.  "Side quest!" she called loudly.  Then she seemed to catch herself, and she whispered, "Indoor voice, sorry.  Side quest!"

Cupcake nodded again, and held her hand out for a high five.  "Exactly.  We can wait on the watch so we can stock up on other things.  Like homework."

“And we’ll start with groceries.  You want us to pick anything up for you guys?"

It turned out they had a list, but Cupcake had to copy it over so it was actually legible to someone other than her, and then Sophie said she would come with them and translate just in case. Cupcake’s expression of relief was enough to have them offering to take her the rest of the day. Even if she got tired of helping, there wasn’t much trouble she could get into at the house, and they had plenty of space.

(Cupcake pulled her aside as they were leaving. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I love her, I just —“

She got it. She really, really did. The younger sister, tagging along on all her brother’s adventures with all her brother’s friends — that was her, twenty years ago. And it wasn’t like she and Allison hadn’t figured out a million ways to make it work since then, but she still looked at Sophie and felt like she was looking in a mirror, sometimes.

“Hey, say no more. We all need a little breathing room sometimes. And we’re happy to help — seriously, give us a shout any time.”)

They were a boisterous group heading into the grocery store. They definitely had more enthusiasm than efficiency, but it was a quiet time of day for shopping, so at least they weren’t getting in too many peoples’ way.

“Isn’t anybody going to say anything about Binx?” Sophie asked, once they’d made it out of the produce section for the second time.

Binx sat down and gave her a reproachful look. “He has excellent manners,” Dani said. “And this store mostly caters to college students — they’ve seen weirder things.”

“Do we need more peanut butter?” Allison asked, swinging back around with the cart. “It’s on sale, but I didn’t think to check before we left this morning.”

“Yes,” Sophie said. They both looked at her. “Oh. Um, we ate a lot of peanut butter that last night at your house?”

“And when you say ‘we,’ you mean…”

“Me and Emily. I guess she mostly watched.”

Allison looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Mm-hmm. We’ll get some more, then. It’s a staple.”

It certainly was. “We’re headed for bread, then eggs. We’ll meet you over at cheese to finish up.”

She couldn’t imagine how long it would have taken if they hadn’t split up. It still took up most of the morning, although a lot of that was trying to split up the groceries at the register so that they could get the things for the apartment bagged separately. Trying unsuccessfully, but they made the effort.

Sophie declared the whole thing “fun,” and Dani just tried to hang onto her calm from the morning. It helped when they could all work on carrying things up to Cupcake’s apartment and stretch their legs a little.

None of them were expecting to see the Groundhog on the front porch when they pulled up to the house with the remainder of the groceries. “Uh-oh,” Allison said.

She was pretty sure that was more of a generic ‘magical creature that sent us on a quest is on the porch; probably not good’ reaction than a specific ‘I know why he’s here; definitely not good’ reaction. It was all in the tone. “What do you think he’s doing here?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Allison said. “He’s inside the boundary lines, though.”

Inside the first line of protections, then. Either he wasn’t there to cause trouble, or he wasn’t bound by ward lines.

“I knew we should have opened the watch right away,” Sophie said.

She shook her head. “We didn’t open it for a few days after we got it, and it was glowing the whole time. I’m not sure that’s the problem.”

“I’m not sure there is a problem,” Allison told them. “But the ice cream is going to melt if we don’t get out of the car soon.”

The Groundhog didn’t say a word while they split up the groceries to carry inside. They all greeted him, and he nodded, but that was it. Binx stayed on the porch to watch him while they got everything out of the car. How could two people and a cat (and occasional houseguests) go through so much stuff? They’d just been at the store a few days before the storm. It was one of life’s eternal mysteries.

And since none of them were really sure if they should invite him inside, they all wound up on the porch together, standing in awkward silence. “Can I take your picture?” Sophie asked suddenly.

The Groundhog frowned. “No. Why?”

Sophie looked at her and Allison. Oh, now she decided she was going to get permission. But really, honesty had worked okay so far. She shrugged. “I say tell him.” Allison nodded.

“I’m texting Pitch to try to get him to come back from the moon,” Sophie said.

 

**In which the Groundhog creates more questions than he answers**

"The moon, huh?  Figures he'd pick somewhere remote.  And overly dramatic.  Does he text back?"  He looked surprisingly interested in the answer.  

"Sometimes," Sophie said.  "This morning I slept late so I missed my first two hours, and he sent a question mark.  That was it, though."

"A question mark," the Groundhog repeated.  "Fantastic.  This is what it's come to."

It wasn't exactly a warm day for lingering outside, and she'd been ready for lunch for the last hour.  If the Groundhog wasn't going to bring it up, she would.  "Why are you here?" she asked.

"Rude," he said.  "I need you to pick up the pace on the questing."

"Why?" Allison said.  "What does it matter to you how fast we're going?"

"Other than the fact that this one's brother is driving me up the wall?  I don't need to answer that.  You're on a clock now, that's the new rule I just made up."

She was more convinced than ever that the Groundhog hadn't hidden Max anywhere in time that wasn't their current time.  How else would he be interacting with him enough to be irritated by his talking?  There had to be something they were missing.  For all that the Groundhog had a reputation for being difficult, he'd never had one for being capricious.

It was Binx who figured it out.  One of the nightmares had gotten close enough to the porch that they could touch noses.  She wondered if he'd named that one.  The Groundhog didn't exactly leap backwards, but there was a definite edging away.  "Are they bothering you?" she asked.  

"You can see them?  What am I saying, of course you can."  He spread his glare around, covering the porch and yard with equal enthusiasm.  "Yeah, they're bothering me.  I can hardly turn around these days without tripping over one.  Cluttering up my caves.  Making trouble."

She frowned.  "They haven't given us much trouble."  They were alarming, sure, but once they'd come to a basic understanding about staying incorporeal indoors, she'd kind of gotten used to them.  "Have you tried naming them?"

"Lucky you, then.  You don't have them popping in from the past and the future, though, do you?  I'm not running a stable, you know.  That's why I'm here."

Allison cleared her throat, or maybe was trying not to laugh.  "While I'm sure that's not ideal, I'm not sure how it has anything to do with the quest."

The Groundhog stared at her.  "Catch up, kid.  I don't send people on quests just for the fun of it."  He pointed at Sophie.  "She knows the girl, the girl knows the ghost, the ghost knows the cat.  The cat goes where you go, you go where she goes, she goes where the pain in my --"  Allison cut him off with another cough, and a significant look at Sophie.  "Er, where he goes," he amended.  "The chatterbox brother.  End of story.  I can't believe I still have to explain these things.  That was your one freebie."

Well, that seemed blatantly untrue.  He was the one who kept changing the rules, and he'd already been more helpful than most.  Binx jumped in to fill in the rest.  "So you took Max because he is -- however convolutedly -- connected to Sophie.  And you believe Sophie is the key to solving your equine overload problem?"

"Everyone does," the Groundhog said simply.  "Don't see Pitch sending question marks to anyone else, do you?  Bit of a bounty on the whole set of you, these days.  Really you should thank me, for snapping you up in a deal so quick."

"Thank you," Allison said dryly.

"You're welcome.  Now back to business.  What's the hold-up?"

She was still trying to wrap her head around the bounty comment.  She held up her hand.  "Let me get this straight: you said you're protecting us by locking us into a quest, but  now you want us to hurry up and finish it.  So which is it?"   

"Yeah, well, protecting you only benefits you; doesn't do much for the rest of us, does it?  Come on, I said no more freebies."

Sophie nodded.  "You're trying to use the things we do when we time travel to show Pitch how he fits with the other Guardians, right?  Just like that movie with the colors."

"I was thinking he's trying to put you in dangerous situations so Pitch will come back to rescue you," Allison said.  "But your idea would be better."

The Groundhog looked away.  "Would I do a thing like that?  Don't answer that.  I'm just saying, these nightmares are causing problems for everyone, and I'm the one who's gonna do something about it."

"Out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose," Allison said.

"What, I can't have hidden depths?  Maybe I'm just tired of being the one whose holiday is a big joke to everyone."  The Groundhog scowled at all of them.  "This could be big for me, so don't blow it."

They really needed a chance to talk about the situation before they made any promises.  "Look, the watch was keeping us on a steady schedule for a week or so; we got used to it.   We'll do what we can to speed things up."  

She was mostly aiming for appeasement, and he could tell.  "Thanks but no thanks, kid.  I've heard that one before.  I've got this covered."  He waved.  "Good luck.  You're going to need it."  

And then he disappeared.  They all looked at each other.  "Everyone okay?" she said. 

"I think so," Allison said.  She had her hand on the door frame.  "The house feels a little weird, but it could just be the nightmares."

The door swung open.  "Or not," she corrected, as a boy tumbled onto the porch.  

"Jack? Is that you?“ Sophie said.  It did look a little bit like Jack Frost.

"You can see me?  Who are you?  How did I get here?  Why is it daytime now?"

Sophie's eyes went wide, and she tapped her foot on the porch floorboards.  "Bunny, I need you.  Right now." 

Jack -- if that was actually who he was -- had only just managed to get his feet under him when the Easter Bunny showed up and he tripped over his cloak.  "What in the -- "  He took in the scene in front of him in seconds, and then yelled, "Jack!"   

There was a rush of cold wind on the porch.  "I didn't do it!  Whoa."  Jack Frost was staring at -- himself.  The resemblance was easier to see when they were side by side.  "It's me," he said.  "I double didn't do it, in that case."

"Why don't we take this inside," Allison suggested.

No one actually agreed -- they were too busy staring at each other (Jack and Jack), or whispering at each other (Sophie and Bunny) -- but they all followed along into the house anyway.  She couldn't work up much surprise at seeing the pocket watch sitting on the kitchen table, open. 

"Wasn't that in your pocket?" Sophie asked.  "How did it get here?"

She had to hide her laugh as the Easter Bunny literally twitched his ears in her direction. He had to duck a little to get them to fit through the doorway.  "Really?  That's the part of this you find hard to believe?  I knew that rat was up to no good."

"So you're me from the past?" Jack said.  "That makes no sense, and yet explains so much about January 1790.  That's when it is, right?  Where you're from?"  

His past self looked suspicious, but nodded slowly.  "How come you can see me?"

Jack stuck his hands in his pockets.  "That is an excellent question.  But here's the thing -- you're not going to remember this.  You're going to think it was all just a really, really weird dream, because that's what I thought, when it happened to me."

Past Jack narrowed his eyes. “So you might as well tell me what’s going on.”

“He’s got you there,” Bunny said, clapping Jack on the shoulder. “Just tell him. Might help him relax.”

Jack sighed. “You’re in the future. You’ve traveled through time to a point when people can see you, because they believe in you. In the literal sense, not the metaphorical one, although there’s that too. I’m you; he’s the Easter Bunny; these are all friends. The wind powers get easier to figure out; we ditched the cloak for a hoodie almost a hundred years ago. It turns out that talking cat you’re going to meet really is a person; the yeti’s name is Phil; Sandy comes back in the end.” He looked at Bunny. “Did I miss anything?”

The words were flippant, but he looked like he was about ten seconds from freaking out.

“A few things, maybe. I should’ve thought before asking,” Bunny said, softer than before. “Take a walk, if you like.”

Jack pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.” Then he looked at the ceiling, and took a deep breath. “I’m going for a walk.” Back to the finger. “Not another word.” He headed deeper into the house — probably headed for the back yard, she thought. They’d been experimenting with a sort of nightmare-free zone back there; if he’d been checking in with Sophie he probably knew about it.

Past-Jack, on the other hand, looked remarkably calm. “How about you?” she asked, just in case. “Doing all right?”

He shrugged. “As dreams go, this is far from the worst or the strangest.”

“Can we offer you lunch?” Allison asked. “We were just about to eat when all of this happened.”

Another shrug. “All right. Thank you.”

Binx butted his head against her leg, and she followed him into the hall. “As the only one of us who has recently encountered my past self…”

“Go on,” she said. “We’ll try to keep things contained in here.”

He hesitated. “You could come.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think that would help? I kind of got the impression he wanted to be alone.”

“It would help.” Well, he was the one who’d recently encountered his past self. If any of them would know, it would be him. “What’s the line about wanting something versus having it? He needs to not get lost in the past; you’re very now.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I think.”

 

**In which Dani is not part of the conversation**

Helping, she found out, mostly involved sitting on one side of the gazebo while she pretended not to eavesdrop on the conversation Thackery and Jack were having on the other side of it.

“No one could see me,” she heard Jack say, again.

“Everyone could see me; it wasn’t much better. Do you know how long it took me to figure out talking?”

“Less than three hundred years? Just a guess.”

“Ha, very funny. Look, you had a hard road; no one is disputing that. Where you are now is much more my concern.”

There was a pause. She snuck a glance over, but they were both looking at the woods, away from her. She felt like she had missed something, but she couldn’t figure out what.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. You said you just did this?”

“In a manner of speaking. We traveled to my past, rather than my past self coming forward, but it was — challenging.”

“I bet. Did you tell yourself anything?”

“I would have told myself everything. But it was like you said, I thought it was a dream when it happened. It was before —“ Words seemed to fail him for a minute, but he finally said, “It was before. What could I say that would have even meant anything to who I was then?”

“Yeah. Is it crazy that I’m jealous of him? He shows up here and everyone’s all over him. Even Bunny, for crying out loud. It’s just — I worked so hard to get to this point. The kids, the Guardians, all of it. What’s he done except die and mope around Pennsylvania for a few decades?”

She winced, and hoped they didn’t notice. That was pretty harsh.

“He’s you, Jack. You deserved acknowledgement at every point in your life; it shouldn’t have been something you had to earn.”

“But it was.” Another pause. “It felt like it was,” Jack muttered, almost too quietly for her to hear.

“And did you consider that maybe the others feel a certain amount of guilt about that? That someone needed their help and they didn’t offer it?”

“I did okay.”

“Yes, you did.” She looked up in time to see Thackery smiling. “You know, a wise person once told me, ‘The things people do are usually less about you and more about them.’

“Oh yeah? Who told you that?”

“No one; I just thought it would sound less pretentious if I said it that way.”

Jack laughed. It made a breeze swirl around the gazebo, and she tried not to shiver. A ghost and a winter Guardian weren’t exactly the most temperature-aware people, and she’d grabbed a jacket on her way out, but it was chilly. Frost patterns had taken over the gazebo railings. She should have thought to bring a hat and gloves too.

“Thanks,” Jack said.  “It helps.”

“You can sit this one out, you know.  We’ve been trying not to involve you too much in case that would break the deal we made with the Groundhog.  But he’s clearly willing to change the rules in the middle, and it’s not like we wouldn’t tell you about this.  Your call.”

“What’s his deal, anyway?  Messing with me is one thing.  Messing with Sophie?  It’s like asking for Bunny to bring the Guardians down on him.”

“As far as we can tell, that may actually be the goal.  All the Guardians.”

Jack made a thoughtful noise.  “He wants Pitch back, huh?  Well, he’s not the only one.”

“You sound more in favor of this plan than you were the last time we talked about it.”

“I’ve been learning more about the Guardians, and their history with Pitch.  It was when he disappeared last time that they started withdrawing more and more.  Less day to day interaction with the kids, with each other.  More supervising from afar, and we all saw how well that worked out.”  Possibly realizing that Thackery might not, in fact, have any idea what he was talking about, he added, “Badly.  For all of us.”

She recognized Thackery’s ‘I think you’re making a mistake but I’m trying to be nice about it’ time.  “And you feel it’s safe for Sophie to take on this challenge alone?”

“She’s not really alone if she has all of you helping her, is she?  Besides, we’ve been around.”

“The Groundhog mentioned that Sophie’s efforts were well known in certain communities.  The word bounty was used.”

“What?”  Jack sounded truly startled.  “Okay, not around enough, obviously.  He specifically said there’s a bounty on Sophie?”

“The whole group, if his information is accurate.  But he identified Sophie as the key.”

“I haven’t heard anything about it.”  Jack frowned.  “I always used to hear about stuff like that.”

“You’re the authorities now,” Thackery said dryly.  “Surprise.”

“That hurts, really.  And what about you — all respectable now, grown up and soul bonded and everything.  Must be causing quite the stir.”

“You must have me confused with some other shapeshifting ghost cat.  I’ve always been respectable.”

“Right.  What is it you said before?  I’ll pretend to believe you.”  He looked towards the house.  “I’m going to go check on your bounty rumors, and be somewhere that’s not here for a while.  Can you let the others know?”

“Of course.”

“And be careful.”

“You too.”

“Not really my thing, but I’ll try.”  Jack leapt onto the railing of the gazebo and then into the air, flipping over and tossing in a few loop de loops as the wind whisked him away.  

She still wasn’t entirely sure why she was there.  Thackery moved to sit next to her on the bench, but he was looking at the sky.  “Thank you,” he said finally.

“You’re welcome,” she said automatically.  “Any time, you know that. Any particular reason you wanted me here this time, though?”

“You looked like you wanted to come,” he said.  “And the last time Jack and I talked about our pasts was — a long time ago, but it wasn’t our most productive conversation.  I thought a neutral party would keep things from going somewhere neither of us wanted to revisit.”

“I’m hardly a neutral party,” she told him.

“Close enough for us,” he said.  “Jack would say thank you too, but he still has no manners.”

“Hey!”  She heard the words drifting back on the wind.  “I heard that!”

She still felt like she might be missing something, but if he was happy, she was willing to roll with it.  “You’ll let me know if you want to talk about it?”

He smiled.  “Always.”

 

**In which Dani finally eats lunch, and no one knows what’s going on**

By the time they got back inside, Cupcake was in the kitchen.  “Sophie told me he was here,” she said.  “And about what the Groundhog told you. How’s Jack?”

“He’s taking some time,” she said.  “I think he’s okay, though. Or he will be.” She realized that she hadn’t heard any car pull up, and Cupcake’s car wasn’t working anyway. “How did you get here?”

Cupcake waved towards the door, which wasn’t helpful at all.  “Bunny popped over to pick me up. And I’ll tell Jamie to be on the lookout.  We’ll make sure he’s not alone if he doesn’t want to be.”

“What about past Jack?  Any idea what we’re supposed to do with him?”

“He seemed to enjoy lunch,” Cupcake offered.  “He’s with Allison right now, I think they’re cleaning?  Dusting?  He likes the music.”

She took a quick look around.  The ground floor looked empty except for the three of them. “And — where is everyone else?”

“Sophie’s helping with the cleaning.  They’re all upstairs.  Bunny took off again; not sure where.   I’m three quarters of the way through the first paper I have to get done, and you guys were in the backyard.  That’s everyone, right?”

She was pretty sure that was everyone. Then again, she hadn’t expected to have to start accounting for two versions of some of them. “Unless we’ve had more people show up that I don’t know about.  Did you get lunch too?  We didn’t run out of bread again, right?”

“I think everyone has eaten except for you — Allison said she left you some stuff on the stove.”

Now that she was thinking about it again, she was starving. The stove was off, but the pan was still warm, because magic was surprisingly useful for the things like that. She put a couple slices of bread in the bottom of a bowl and poured the soup over them, then tossed a handful of salad almonds on top of that. She caught Cupcake’s expression and said, “It’s more efficient this way. Like soup and sandwiches, but all together.”

“No, I like it,” Cupcake said. “I mean, the student version would be to skip either the bowl or the pan, because that would save having one more dish to wash, but yours works too.”

“We used to do that!” she said, and Thackery groaned.

“They did,” he confirmed.

Cupcake looked back and forth between them. “Is this where you tell me you decided to switch to this because you’re adults who make good choices?”

“Definitely not,” Thackery muttered.

Dani waved towards where the microwave used to be. “Yeah, not so much. We had a microwave, but then Allison was doing a thing, and we were using it as part of this ritual? And it sort of caught on fire a little. Then we found out that space was really perfect for storing stuff, and we just never got around to replacing it. Also the pans are non-stick, so unless we want to go searching for the non-metal silverware, it’s easier to just put the food in something else to eat it.”

“I don’t know if that’s worrying or reassuring,” Cupcake said.

“Well, that’s adulthood in a nutshell.” It looked like Cupcake had set up her books at the kitchen table, which was a good way to get things done as long as you didn’t mind getting interrupted a lot. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Go for it. Any thoughts on pre-Raphaelite artists and their relevance in the modern day in an area other than art?”

She tried to recall anything about pre-Raphaelites from her art history elective. “They — published a magazine called ‘The Germ,’ which could be compared to the blogs and twitter feeds of today?”

“They formed in an attempt to define and defend what they considered ‘true art,’ and ultimately fell apart over the same argument,” Thackery said. “Not unlike groups forming to promote social change or values at any point in history, including today, that subsequently experience difficulty keeping up with the complexities and rapidly evolving nature of the cause they claim to champion.”

She and Cupcake both stared at him, and he pointed at the books. “Three hundred years as a cat; lots of time for reading.”

“Huh. That could work, actually. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

There were a few minutes of quiet while she ate and Cupcake typed, and then she said, “You know, I realize you just got settled back in at your apartment, but if we’re going to be having younger versions of ourselves show up with no warning, it might help to have all of us in one place.”

“You really want us camping out here again?” Cupcake asked.

“We really do. Only if you want to — it’s not like we can’t keep in touch without being in the same house, obviously. But if you do want to, you’re certainly welcome.”

“More than welcome,” Allison confirmed, walking into the kitchen trailing Sophie. She waited for Jack to show up behind them. Nothing.

“Did you lose someone?” she asked. (It probably wasn’t a good idea to have past versions of any of them wandering around unsupervised, but definitely not one who could fly and had powers.)

Sophie shook her head. “He’s gone again.” She looked sad, but managed to smile when Allison put a hand on her shoulder.

“We’re pretty sure he’s gone back to his own time,” Allison said.

As a declaration, it really didn’t sound as confident as she would have hoped. She’d been joking when she asked if they’d lost him. “Not trying to be the doubter here, but — how sure is pretty sure?”

“Ninety percent? Ninety-five?” Allison held up her hands in a definite ‘what do you want from me, I’m a witch, not a mathematician’ gesture. “We had the watch with us upstairs, and it stopped glowing when he disappeared. Based on our past experiences — no pun intended — it seemed like the best explanation.”

Thackery offered, “It’s not as if we had to do anything particular to activate the return sequence previously.”

“That was quick, though,” Cupcake said. “He couldn’t have been here more than a couple of hours.”

“Well, the Groundhog did say he wanted us to pick up the pace. Maybe we did the slow ones first, and they’ll get faster now. Any word from Pitch?”

Sophie had the phone in her hand, but she shook her head. “Not since this morning. I sent a picture of us all cleaning anyway.”

They were all just guessing, really. There were times when the whole thing felt ridiculously convoluted for a plan that essentially only had two steps: find Pitch and Max, and get them back to where and/or when they were supposed to be. It was the hows and whys of those steps that were making her feel like they were going in circles.

“So, about moving back in,” Allison said, interrupting her thoughts. “Would you like to think about it, or would you like us to come help pack up some stuff? Or we can drop it; no pressure — I’m only asking now because I have to go pick up a delivery on the other side of town, and I’d be going right by your place.”

Cupcake and Sophie exchanged a look. “You’re the boss,” Sophie said, and Cupcake laughed.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” she said. “But I think this — whatever it is, and whatever is going to happen next, isn’t going to be easier if we’re alone. So I think we should stick together. All of us.”

 

**In which Binx shares that naps are an acceptable response in most situations**

“Why do you think all the time travel so far has been to or from the past?” She’d been thinking about it for a while — the Groundhog had all but told them he had access to the future as well as the past, so why not use it?

“I have absolutely no idea,” Binx said. His eyes were closed. His version of ‘helping’ Cupcake and Sophie get more officially set up in the house (mostly Sophie, who was apparently documenting the whole thing for some kind of volunteer project she and Jamie were pretending she was doing) was sleeping in the guest room. (‘Testing the mattress,’ according to him.)

“Maybe he was lying,” she said, although that seemed unlikely, based on what they’d seen of his powers so far.

“Maybe we all just keep being irrepressibly honest in the future, and he doesn’t want our future selves coming back and telling us how it all works out.”

Well, that was a possibility. “But if our going back in time and talking with our past selves isn’t going to mess up the timeline, than going the other way shouldn’t either, right? I mean, if time isn’t really linear, than anything we will do is something we’ve already done, and it just depends on your perspective.”

Binx opened his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe we leave explaining time travel to the experts, and just see what happens? It’s been working so far.”

Another thought occurred to her. “Wait a minute — consider this. What if we’ve already been visited by our future selves, but we just thought it was a really weird dream? Isn’t that what you and Jack both said you thought had happened in the past? Have you had any weird dreams lately?” She didn’t think she had, but there had been that one about flying to California on an open-air barge. It had been weird, but probably not ‘visit from the future’ weird.

“Unless the last few weeks combined all count as a weird dream, which they don’t, because we already checked, then no, I haven’t.” He paused, then added, “It’s a good idea, though. We should ask the others.”

“We might be further along in the eight than we thought, if it turns out to be true. I don’t really know what that would mean, though.” She frowned.

“I think it means we should take a break.”

“Today was supposed to be our break day,” she agreed. “I remember that plan. Seems like morning was a long time ago now.”

Binx had his eyes closed again. “I’d say the watch will still be there tomorrow, but at this point it seems more accurate to say it will do what it wants, regardless of our actions.”

“So it would be better to be well-rested?” Binx’s ear twitched in agreement, and she laughed. “Okay, okay. You’ve convinced me. But we should clear out of the guest room, in case anyone else wants to get in on your plan.” She sent a text to Allison to see how things were going downstairs — it seemed a little odd that no one had come up with anything in the last half hour or so. She got back a picture of Sophie asleep on the couch, with Cupcake right beside her.

Looked like Operation: Naptime was already a go. “Come on, let’s go. You have your own space.”

“I like this one,” Binx said, rolling over.

She shook her head. “Why do people think you’re the responsible one? I’m going to end up carrying you, aren’t I?”

He purred, and she couldn’t help giving him an extra hug as she picked him up.

“It’s the accent, I think,” he said sleepily. “I can teach you, if you want.”

She smiled into his fur. “Maybe after the nap.”

 

**In which everybody has caught on to the ‘weird dream’ excuse and isn’t buying it anymore**

Taking a nap in the late afternoon threw off her usual sleeping pattern, and she found herself wide awake at — she checked the clock — just before three in the morning. The longer she lay in bed trying to convince herself she was sleepy, the more she just felt hungry. And sort of cranky.

She wasn’t entirely surprised to see Allison already in the kitchen when she made her way down there, rummaging around in one of the cupboards. Now that she knew there had been a secret candy stash, who knew what other snacks Allison had tucked away? “Hey,” she said. “You couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

She _was_ surprised when Allison jumped and spun around, because that wasn’t Allison. Or it was, but — “Future Allison!” she said. “That is so cool. I like your hair.”

“Thank you,” future Allison said. “I mean, no! I’m not from the future! This is just a dream. Maybe you’re sleep walking. Very strange.”

She sat down at the table with a yawn. Future Allison looked good — she couldn’t tell how far in the future she might be from, but apparently they had cool hair then. “Yeah, we tried that with our past selves too. I don’t think it’s going to work now, though.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this,” Allison said. She gave Dani a careful look. “Maybe it does work, and you do think it’s a dream.”

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. Hey, if you’re from the future, what were you looking for in our cupboard?”

“Nothing,” Allison said quickly.

She considered just going back upstairs and dealing with future Allison in the morning. Later in the morning, anyway. But it would probably be even harder to sleep knowing that there was a time traveler hanging out in the kitchen, and she still hadn’t had a snack. “Well, okay, but so far all of these time travel things have included some kind of important communication element. So probably to get back to your regular time you have to impart some wisdom, or let us impart wisdom to you. Do you want me to wake current you up so you can talk? We’ve been about half and half on that so far.”

“No!” Allison took a step forward. “No, please don’t wake up your me. I definitely don’t remember this, so I shouldn’t be part of it.”

She thought about that for a minute. “That would make more sense if I’d gotten more sleep, right?”

“Probably. But none of us really understand how it works, exactly, so maybe not.”

Something about the way she said it, or the way she glanced at her wrist before tucking it behind her back, made her wonder. It could also have been that she finally noticed the Groundhog’s pocket watch, back on the kitchen table. Not glowing. Not open.

“You —“ She stopped. Her middle of the night brain couldn’t figure out how to say it, so she just pointed at the watch, and then at Allison. What if she wasn’t even from the future?

Luckily, Allison knew what she meant, or was at least able to make an educated guess.  "Yeah, it wasn't the watch that brought me here," she said. "Spoiler alert -- once the community makes a couple of breakthroughs in combining magic and tech, things move pretty quickly on that front."

"You just said you didn't know how time travel works, though."

"Not the actual rules of it, no.  I'm still not sure it even has rules, or if it does they keep changing.  That's not uncommon with technology either, though.  Stuff that seems impossible one day is commonplace the next.  Once the interface gets simplified enough, almost anyone can use it, regardless of whether they understand what's happening on the back end when they push the buttons."

She frowned.  "That sounds really dangerous."

"Kind of.  But so is driving a car, right?  It's not like most people know how a gas-powered engine works, but they still get behind the wheel.  Even things we know could be bad for us, or we're not sure if they could be.  Life is full of risks.  You do what you can to manage them, and you go from there."

Apparently there would be a point in the future where time travel would be considered analogous to driving a car.  That was -- sort of a combination of cool and terrifying.  Or there was always the possibility that Allison was bluffing.  She had a surprisingly good poker face.  "And is that what you're doing here now?  Managing risks?"

"Why does there have to be a reason?  Maybe I was feeling nostalgic and just stopped by for a visit."

Had she just been thinking Allison had a good poker face?  Clearly not all the time.  "Feeling nostalgic for looking in the dish cupboard at three in the morning?  Somehow I find that hard to believe."

Allison sighed, and sat down at the table across from her.  "Yeah, that wasn't my best excuse.  In my defense, I've done this a bunch of times today already and this is the first time I've actually run into anyone.  I wasn't expecting anyone to be awake."

The unspoken 'why are you awake now?' was obvious.  "Weird day," she offered.

"Aren't they all," Allison said, but she didn't launch into any kind of explanation.  

"Is this one of those things where I shouldn't keep asking what you're doing, because if you tell me it could disrupt the time stream?  Because I thought we'd decided that wasn't a problem we needed to worry about."

Allison made a face.  "Well, we decided worrying about it probably wouldn't help, which isn't exactly the same thing."

Close enough.  "So what I'm hearing is 'yes, you should keep asking what I'm doing,' and you know my imagination is going to come up with a million worst case scenarios unless you tell me.  So many disasters, Allison.  You don't even want to know."

"You still do this in the future, you know," Allison said.

"Still not hearing a no," she countered.

"It's not that interesting."  

She put on her most skeptical expression.  "You're in the past; pretty much anything that has to do with time travel is really interesting right now."

"Fair point.  Well, we're putting in buoys.  Time buoys -- very useful things."

"Aren't buoys used to mark stuff like lobster traps?  Is there such a thing as time lobsters?"  She shook her head.  "No, wait, I'm not sure I want to know that."  She was still working on integrating the nightmares into her worldview; she wasn't ready for time lobsters.

"No time lobsters.  At least that we know of.  Buoys are generally used as markers, yes, but that covers a range of things.  You've got your mooring buoys, your navigational buoys, your warning about undersea hazards buoys -- they're known as the guideposts of the sea."  She paused.  "I actually think you told me that name, which means you might have learned it from me and then taught it to me later, which is just one of the many conundrums of wandering around the timestream."

"Guideposts of the sea."  Sure, she could remember that.  "So what are these ones marking?"

"Us," Allison said.  "This may not surprise you to hear, but weird things tend to happen to us.  Including this whole --"  She waved at the watch, and looked like she was searching for the right word.  Finally she settled on, "Experience."

"And the buoys help?"

"Sure.  Sort of.  They help us, anyway.  Future us.  They don't actually -- do anything, for you right now?  But you weren't using that space in the cupboard anyway, and I found a lid someone dropped back there, so I think it's probably a net gain."

She nodded, hoping future Allison could still tell the difference between her 'yes I'm listening' and her 'yes I understand' nods.  "That sounds -- abridged,” she said.

"A little, yeah.  Here’s the best way I’ve found to explain it -- I think of time as a landscape.  There's all kinds of ways to travel around that landscape, and some of those ways create a visible path, right?  And if you keep traveling that same route in the same way, it creates a pattern, like ruts in a dirt road.  Yes?"

"Landscape, pattern, ruts.  I'm with you so far."  Hopefully.

"So now imagine that instead of traveling along a route, you spent a lot of time sticking right around the same area, like camping in a clearing.  You can't see a single clear path, but there's all this mud, and it's obvious there's been a lot of traffic."

She wondered if Allison would mind if she grabbed a snack.  Probably not, right?  "I think this metaphor may be getting away from you, but okay.  Still following."

"I'm almost done.  So now imagine you're moving through that same landscape a different way -- maybe trying to cross over that path, or that muddy clearing.  It would be really helpful to know where they were, so you could either avoid them entirely or at least be prepared when they showed up."

Allison was using her play group voice again, but she was too grateful for the simplified explanation to call her on it. “So you’re saying we’re a muddy patch? I think I might be insulted about that.”

“Not you, specifically,” Allison said. “Just some of the spaces around you. The group of you. Us, whatever. You know what I mean.”

She did, was the thing. Or she thought she did. “So it’s like — temporal trail maintenance,” she said.

“Yes! Exactly.” Allison seemed relieved that she’d managed to grasp at least the most basic level of what she was saying. She wondered again just how far in the future this Allison had come from.

“You said you’d set up a bunch of these today — I’m guessing that means this isn’t our last ‘experience,’ huh?” It was theoretically possible that all the other buoys had been before this one (certainly plenty of weird things to choose from), but it did seem statistically unlikely.

Allison laughed. “Ah, no. Not exactly. Nothing quite like this again so far, though, for what it’s worth.”

“Any tips you can share, oh wise time traveler?” She wasn’t really expecting the answer to be yes, so she was surprised when Allison seemed to be thinking it over.

“People don’t usually ask me for advice,” Allison said. “That’s actually more your thing, in my time. But I’ll see what I can do. I mean, stay hydrated, that’s always good advice. Don’t underestimate the power of ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘you’re right’ as the communication gold standard. Don’t worry about the actual gold standard, by the way, it’s not coming back.”

(She could honestly say she hadn’t been worried about that, but she nodded anyway.)

Allison leaned forward in her chair and caught her eye. “And the next time you see Pitch, ask him what makes every dawn a miracle. He’ll know what you mean.”

“What makes every dawn a miracle,” she repeated. Then she frowned. “Wait, that’s it? Can I say hi first?”

“Sure, if you want. I don’t remember exactly how it went.”

That sounded like a lie, but she was willing to let it go — she hadn’t expected any information at all, so she figured it a vague answer was better than none. Plus, she’d been looking for that missing lid for weeks. “Thanks,” she said.

“Any time. I should get going, before anyone comes looking for me. Probably you.” She pointed at Dani. “Unless you’re avoiding me, in hopes that I’ll forget you never told me about this.”

She held up her hands. “You’re the one who told me I didn’t, so…”

 

**In which staying hydrated isn’t quite enough**

She really thought that they would get a few days after that — maybe just one or two, so they could have the next crisis on the weekend. In retrospect, she wasn’t sure why.

On the other hand, she could make a solid guess about why she hadn’t told Allison about meeting her future self in their kitchen in the middle of the night. They were all too damned busy with what had happened the next morning to talk about it right then, and she was pretty sure this wasn’t one of those things they were going to want to revisit for an in-depth discussion later.

“What is this?” someone yelled. Maybe Cupcake. Because of course they couldn’t manage to get her to class on time for even one day.

“I think it’s quicksand!” That sounded like Sophie. They were on opposite sides of her, not really far enough apart to make the yelling necessary, but she could understand the urge.

She had no idea what quicksand felt like, but whatever they were stuck in felt like she imagined quicksand might feel like, if it was in an underground parking garage with just enough light to make her feel very, very nervous about what she was seeing. “This doesn’t even make sense!” Cupcake shouted. “None of us could possibly have quicksand in our past, that’s crazy!”

(Unfortunately, that probably meant one of them had quicksand in their future. She was trying not to think about it too hard. They’d figure it out, and then they’d figure it out again, because that was what they did.)

“I can’t remember, are you supposed to do the swimming motion in quicksand, or is that avalanches?” Sophie sounded like she was having the time of her life.

Meanwhile, she was slowly realizing that the other two didn’t know she was there. Then it seemed awkward that she hadn’t said anything yet. “Hey, I’m here too,” she said. If you couldn’t be awkward in a dark parking garage full of quicksand, she figured…

“And me,” Binx said, from his perch on her head. “Unfortunately.”

“Dani!” Sophie yelled, for no clear reason.

“I think quicksand is just holding still,” she said. “And then you can float, I think? But I’m not sure this is really quicksand, so I don’t know how helpful that will be.”

“I’m already holding still! Wait, what do you think it is?” Cupcake said.

Personally, she didn’t see how being stuck at the top of the quicksand was all that much of an improvement over being stuck hip deep in the stuff — stuck was stuck, and at least now she could see if anything was coming. Unless it was coming from the ceiling, but she was trusting Binx to keep an eye out for threats from above. “Probably a magical trap?” she guessed. “I’ve never heard of there being quicksand inside a structure. You guys are seeing a parking garage too, right?”

“Yes?” Cupcake said. “I think so. I don’t see any cars, but the building looks right.”

“Look, I’m swimming!” Sophie had managed to get herself to float, and was moving closer to them. Not very quickly, but definitely moving. She was pretty sure you couldn’t do that in regular quicksand.

“That’s great!” Cupcake called. “Keep going, you’re almost to Dani!”

This is what she got for telling Allison that quicksand was vastly over-represented in children's literature. It was some kind of karmic quicksand comeuppance.  Alternately, she supposed it was possible that Sophie had previously unknown magical quicksand powers.  

"Do you hear that?” Cupcake asked suddenly. Sophie stopped moving, and they all looked around like maybe they’d suddenly be able to see something.  "It sounds like someone's coming."

There was a lot of echoing.  Mostly she could hear water dripping, somewhere, and Binx grumbling quietly to himself.  But there could be footsteps, somewhere in there.  And voices.  She really hoped it was one of their future selves, and not whoever thought it was a great idea to fill a parking garage with quicksand.  

The voices suddenly became crystal clear, like whoever was talking had turned a corner.  "Are you sure it's not just your sensor system glitching on you again?  How would anyone get in here without tripping any of the other alarms?"

"My systems don't glitch.  And I can feel it, like a tickle in the back of my head.  I don't like it."  

She didn't recognize either of the voices, but Sophie did.  "Bunny!" she said, waving her arms and dipping dangerously low in the quicksand.  

"Whoa, easy there."  She was close enough to reach out and grab Sophie's shirt -- her pajama shirt, because they hadn't gotten any further than stepping out of their rooms before they'd been dumped into (presumably) the future, right in the middle of the magic quicksand.  Seriously, their lives.  This was why she wore socks to bed.

"Sophie?!"

The whole area lit up like someone had flipped a switch, which they probably had.  She blinked, trying to get her eyes to adjust.  It was a bigger space than she'd thought, crisscrossed with walkways and rope ladders.  Not a parking garage, then.  The Easter Bunny was standing in a doorway not far from them, next to a woman it took her a minute to realize must be Sophie, a few decades down the road.

"Bunny!" Sophie said again.  "Hi!"

He looked back and forth between the younger and older versions of Sophie, and glared.  "That rat!" he said.

Future Sophie laughed.  "Oh, I remember this!  Hi mini-me!  Everyone okay in there?"

"Yes!" Sophie said immediately.

Cupcake's "yes" was slightly less enthusiastic, and Binx was still grumbling.  "I suppose," he said finally.    

"Sure," she said.  Now that she was somewhat more confident that there weren't any critters in the quicksand that were sneaking up on them, she was better.  "You?"

"Hi Dani!"  Future Sophie waved at all of them.  "Binx, Cupcake -- hi, this is so great.  Good to see you!  Sorry about the --"  She waved a hand around the room.  

"Magical quicksand?"

Sophie nodded.  "Yeah, that was my idea.  It adds some extra excitement to the obstacle course, you know?  Sometimes it's a whirlpool instead, but I like the quicksand.  It's more fun."  

"And there's a way to get us out of it, right?"  She really thought they should stay focused on that.  

"Oh!  Yeah, absolutely, hang on a second.  Bunny can get you out."

Bunny folded his arms.  "I don't see why I have to do it.  The quicksand was your idea, remember?"

"Because I remember you doing it," Sophie said, and that was that.  As soon as they were back on solid ground, she heard Sophie add, "Hey, how come you don't remember it?"

"Look, if I remembered every time I had to pull someone's younger self out of the magical quicksand in the obstacle course...  Ha, little joke there.  I don't know, kid.  I've been around a long time; there's a lot to remember."

"Sophie," she said, and both of them turned around to look at her.  "Future Sophie, sorry.  Where's Allison?"  

"Our Allison, or your Allison?"

"The one from our time.  None of us were together when the time jump happened, and then four of us showed up in the same place here -- so where's Allison?"

"She's not here.  I mean, she wasn't here, that I remember."  Sophie frowned.  "I wasn't paying as much attention to that part, but I think she told us she figured out something had happened to us, and was getting ready to track down the Groundhog for information when we showed up again.  It was something like that."

"So she's okay?"  That was her real question, after all.  Probably should've just led with that.  Sophie nodded -- even more comforting, Bunny nodded too, and she breathed a sigh of relief.  

"Does this stuff come out?" Cupcake asked, holding up her quicksand-covered arms.  

"It turns into glitter under hot water," future Sophie told them.  "You can use the shower here if you want."  

It felt a little surreal -- okay, a lot surreal -- to be who knew how many years in the future, taking a shower in her pajamas and watching glitter swirl down the drain.  

"This is pretty weird," she said.

"On the scale of weird things we've personally experienced?"  Binx seemed to have decided that staying as far off the ground as possible was the way to go -- he was perched on top of the towel cabinet.  "I'm not sure it breaks into the top ten."

"Throw in the time travel element, though.  And you're not the one covered in glitter right now."

"Fair point.  Top twenty, then.  Unless we're counting all eight of the trips together."  

She hadn't thought of that.  They were all sort of tied together, at least in theory.  "Good call.  Top ten for sure, if we count them as a set.  What do you think we're supposed to be learning this time?"

Binx sounded thoughtful.  "I don't think this one is for us."  

"Sophie, you think?"  

"One of them, or both.  It would make sense.  Unless we're supposed to be learning the dangers of glitter."

"I think we were all well aware of those dangers already.  But you know what that means? We can take this jump off."

"Break time?"

"Break time."

 

**In which everything seems great until they stop to think about it, and then everyone is worried**

"Do you think we can take some of these towels back with us?" She was pretty sure Binx wasn’t going to give his up.

"Maybe we can smuggle some of them out under these future bathrobes."

Cupcake had been thoroughly on board with the break time plan, and it turned out there was a deck above the obstacle course with a set of the most comfortable chairs she'd ever sat in.  The future had clearly prioritized comfortable seating over speed drying technology, but the bathrobes more than made up for it.

The Sophies had disappeared somewhere further into wherever they were -- a building?  Somewhere underground?  She'd given up trying to figure it out.  The rest of them were being not-so-subtly quarantined in the obstacle course area. Hopefully the Easter Bunny counted as an acceptable character reference, or she was going to feel really bad about letting their Sophie wander off with a stranger, even if that stranger was her future self.

“Hey, how long would you say we’ve been here?” Cupcake asked.

She hadn’t been wearing a watch, and her phone was back in the past. The obstacle course was conspicuously free of clocks, but it felt like it had been at least a few hours. “I’m really sorry about you missing class again,” she said.

Cupcake shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. My advisor knows about all this, at least parts of it. She’s the one who told me about you. She can cover for me.”

“I thought you got our names from Emily,” she said.

“Your names, sure, but I wasn’t going to ask you for help just based on a newspaper article.” Her expression clearly conveyed how crazy she thought that would be. “I asked around. She had good things to say. She’s worked with you before, I guess.” She hesitated, and then added, “So you don’t think it’s been more than six hours?”

“If it had been more than six hours, Allison would have sent us a message,” she said. She looked at Binx. “Right?”

“She would if she could,” he agreed. “But there could be any number of reasons why she hasn’t. Including that it hasn’t been six hours yet.”

“They said she was okay.” She was trying to convince herself as much as anything.

Cupcake frowned. “I don’t know, I thought that part was a little vague. Did they mean she was okay when we disappeared, or when we got back? Or that she’s okay now, in this time? And unless Sophie’s changed a lot, she was definitely making that answer up, about what she remembered.”

She didn’t want to be hearing this. Her ability to stay calm about things like time travel was deeply dependent on her absolute confidence that Binx and Allison would rescue her if she needed it, and vice versa. If it turned out that not only was Allison not going to rescue them, but actually needed to be rescued herself, and Dani had just been lounging around in future land, well. It was going to be a problem.

“Any of those three options would be a good start,” Binx said, calmly climbing into her lap and nudging his head under her hand. It was a silent reminder to breathe, and she scratched under his chin in thanks. “And I find it entirely possible that all of them are true, and that Sophie made up her answer simply because she didn’t want us to worry. With all due respect to the seven year-old, she doesn’t pay that much attention to us most of the time. I remember almost nothing from that age, and certainly couldn’t repeat the specifics of any conversation I might have heard.”

It was enough to surprise a laugh out of her, and Cupcake giggled. “Your seven years old was a lot longer ago than Sophie’s,” she said.

“Besides,” Binx added, pretending he hadn’t heard her. “With a little luck, I should be able to call Emily here myself. She may be able to give us more information than our current hosts. Or about our current hosts.”

“What do you need?”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Always.”

He stood up and stretched, and then shifted to Thackery in the blink of an eye. “Why didn’t you do that while we were in the quicksand?” Cupcake asked.

“I didn’t need to,” he said. “Dani had me.”

Cupcake nodded like that made complete sense. “Okay. Sorry, you probably need to concentrate.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s not a complicated process, just one that requires a certain grounding in the present moment — slightly more challenging when the present moment isn’t actually the present. Talking helps, actually.”

“In that case, I’ve been wondering — if you can’t get in touch with Emily, do you think we should try to call Pitch?”

“You can do that?” Dani said.

“Maybe?” Cupcake looked hesitant, but then she nodded. “Probably. I might need to be asleep for it to work, though. I think he can tell when people are calling him, just like Bunny and Jack. But right now, in the other present, he’s ignoring it. Or he’s too far away, I don’t know. But if he’s around in this present, he might show up.”

She wasn’t so sure. Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny showed up when _Sophie_ called, but she doubted the rest of them had that kind of pull. But Cupcake was the one who’d actually met Pitch, so if she thought it would work…

Thackery wavered, just slightly, which was alarming even though it was probably a good sign. “Let’s start with Emily,” she said.

“Good to know I’m still your first call,” Emily said, appearing next to Thackery and waving at all of them. “Hey there. It took you ages to do that, by the way. I can’t just wander around looking for you when you get misplaced in time, you know. Seriously, Allison summoned me first thing.”

“There was quicksand,” Thackery said, as if that was explanation enough.  

And maybe it was, because Emily nodded.  “That works.  Explains —" She waved a hand at them, or more likely their bathrobes.  “All of this."  Then she frowned.  "Some of this, at least.  Not that much, actually.  What's the less abridged version?”

Everyone looked at her. Recap time, okay, she could do that.  "So, the Groundhog wanted us to get through the eight time jumps faster, and since then the watch has been doing its thing without us opening it.  When I walked into the hallway this morning I ended up here.  The four of us were in quicksand, which turned out to be part of an obstacle course that probably belongs to the Easter Bunny.  We met future-him and future-Sophie, and we've been waiting for our Sophie to finish up whatever she's doing so we can go back home."

"Right," Emily said.  "And then you -- decided to call me?"  

She nodded.  “We weren't sure how long it had been, and we got worried.  You said Allison summoned you?”  

“Not in the traditional way, but close enough.  She’s family; we can bend the rules a little.”  Emily wandered around the room they were in, looking at the walls.  Possibly through the walls; she wasn't totally clear on ghostly abilities.  "That's the good news.  Bad news is that something snatched her up right around the time you all got here, and we're not sure what.  I can get to her, but I can't tell where she is."

"Is she okay?"

"For the moment.  She's worried about all of you.  Nothing's happened since she got there, but who knows if that's a good sign or a bad one."  She looked around the room again.  "It feels sort of like this, actually.  Not here, it's not that much alike, but it has a similar -- I don't know how to explain it."

"Can you get us to her?" Cupcake asked.  

"I don't think so."  She looked frustrated.  "I wish I could, believe me."

"So we need a plan."

They all looked at each other.  Cupcake said, "Maybe we should figure out where Sophie is first."

She nodded.  "I was thinking we should probably get dressed, but that works too.  Both would be good, and then we can make a plan from there."  If they could figure out why Emily thought the place felt similar before they all got sent back, that would be great, but she wasn't sure their luck was that good.  (See: quicksand.)

"We can find Sophie," Thackery said.  "You two can get dressed, and we'll meet back here."

 

**In which plans are made to be broken**

"Pint-sized Sophie is watching the quarter-pint one.  She's napping."  It was amazing that the Easter Bunny managed to look imposing even while he was saying things like that.  "She needs her rest."  Or that.

"And when she's done with her nap?" Dani asked.

Bunny shrugged.  "I'm not the one with the magic pocket watch."  No one said anything, but their expressions must have been enough.  "Don't tell me -- none of you have any idea how the thing works."

"You don't seem too worried about it in our time," Cupcake said.

"Well."  Bunny looked uncomfortable, and one of his ears twitched.  "I'd forgotten how little you all were.  It seems different, now."

"We may not know exactly how it works," she said.  "But we've done okay so far."  Somehow the 'you look young' argument still made her prickly.  She really thought she'd get over that once she passed thirty.

Thackery cleared his throat.  "From what we've been able to understand up to this point, the watch's magic has returned all time travelers to their correct location in the timestream on its own.  The duration of the trips varies, though it seems dependent upon one of the travelers either receiving or providing some sort of assistance."

"Makes sense.  The rat probably can't tweak it too much, and they're usually set up for that sort of thing."  

She skipped over the obvious 'what sort of thing is that' question, and went right to the important point.  "Do you know what happened to Allison?"  They should get some kind of benefit for being stuck in the future, right? All of this had already happened.

"I'm not sure."

Well, that wasn't the answer she'd been hoping for.

Emily put her hands on her hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. Me and Sandy were on the other side of the planet, sorting out some nightmares that were causing trouble. So I know what you all told me happened, but I never believed a word of it.” He gave Emily a considering look. “You’re the one who’s jumping around in time all on their own, why don’t you find out?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Emily said. “I have to have something specific I’m looking for, like someone calling me. I can’t just flip through time like a book and pick the page I want.”

She was no expert on the facial expressions of the Easter Bunny, but she was pretty sure he was trying to avoid something. “Not sure what to tell you in that case,” he said.

“Bunny,” Cupcake said, and wow, she could really pack a lot of disappointment into that one word. “That’s not very convincing.”

Both ears twitched that time. “You know, come to think of it, Jack could have been there. I should call him.”

“Bunny,” Cupcake repeated. They stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Fine.” He paused, and then said, “Are you sure?”

There was a chorus of yes’s from around the room, and he winced. “That’s what I thought. I’m not supposed to tell any of you any of this, so listen up. You’re going to go back, you’re going to find Allison, you’re going to meet Pitch. I didn’t show up until it was all over. He’s the one who told us all not to tell you about it, because of your ‘genuine surprise’ when it happened. He says he likes the way things worked out, and the rest of us aren’t going to argue with the results, so we’ve been sworn to secrecy.” He pointed at Cupcake. “And you agreed, so don’t give me that look again.”

“Thank you,” Cupcake said.

“Don’t thank me, I’m already pretending it never happened. And practice your surprised faces!”

She blinked, and the room disappeared. But it wasn’t the instantaneous ‘you were one place and then you were somewhere else’ that she had, somehow, gotten used to. Instead she felt a sideways pull, followed by a disorienting swoop, like a roller coaster going around a loop. And when she opened her eyes again, it felt like they’d been shut for more than just a single blink.

On the other hand, she wasn’t immersed in quicksand, so in some ways things were looking up. And the lights were on, although there wasn’t much to see. Four walls, floor, ceiling. No furniture. No door, which was — mildly terrifying, but she’d been around enough magical beings to know they weren’t always necessary. Thackery’s voice whispered in her ear. ”I’m here.” She nodded, just enough so he knew she heard him. They’d pulled this trick before, although not as much lately — with all three of them becoming more well known, it was less and less likely that they’d run into trouble that didn’t expect them to come as a set.

This certainly didn’t look like anything they’d encountered before. Very minimalist. Very white. She actually felt a little grubby, standing there in her socks and pajamas, but if you wanted your guests to look presentable, that’s what invitations were for. She was pretty sure she’d been snatched right out of their return trip through the timestream, and as soon as her head stopped spinning, she’d try to figure out who — or what — might be able to do something like that.

It didn’t take long, but unfortunately that’s because the answer was just a big question mark. “I think the others are here too,” Thackery said.

Could be good, could be bad. She wasn’t used to the silent treatment — not that she was expecting some big villain monologue, but if the others were there, they were going to need to find some way to communicate.

Maybe they were close enough to bang on the walls?  They didn’t conveniently all know Morse code or anything (they really should put that on the list), but knocking was easy enough.  Somehow she was hesitant to just start shouting — the silence seemed to discourage any noise louder than a whisper.  Also she wasn’t sure she could handle calling out and having no one answer.  Maybe singing?  There were a limited number of songs she could sing from memory, and she didn’t think anyone would appreciate her launching into ‘the song that never ends,’ regardless of the volume.

The walls dissolved.  

That hadn’t been on her top five list of things she was expecting, but okay.  She could suddenly see familiar faces all around her — Allison was the closest , sitting down and looking as surprised as she felt.  Sophie was on her other side, and opposite them was Cupcake, both hands fisted at her sides and a golden unicorn at her back.  

There was another second or two of silence, while everyone took that in.

“I don’t like enclosed spaces,” Cupcake said finally.

And then they were all moving, meeting in the middle of the (now much larger) room.  

“You’re here!”

“Are you okay?”

“Your Mom is never going to let me watch you again.”

“What happened?”

Allison caught her up in a hug.  “I was worried,” she said quietly.  

“Me too.  Glad we’re together now—all of us.”  

Allison nodded her understanding, and squeezed her shoulders.  “We can figure this out,” she said.

“Where are we?” Sophie asked

“I wish I could tell you,” Allison said.  “But I’ve been here for a while and this is the first time I’ve seen anything change.”  She looked at Cupcake — and the unicorn sticking its head over her shoulder.  “Nice job, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Cupcake said.  

She looked like she was waiting for someone to question the unicorn, so Dani said, “Unicorn?”

“She’s with me.”

Everyone nodded.  “Sounds good,” Allison said.  “You’ll tell us if there’s anything either of you need?”

“Okay.”  Sophie was sneaking around Cupcake’s side.  She held her hand out, and the unicorn delicately touched its nose to her fingers.  Sophie giggled, and Cupcake rolled her eyes.  “We’ll let you know.”

As happy as she was to know everyone was okay, they’d gone from a bunch of small spaces to a single large space.  Still no visible windows or doors.  “Anyone have any ideas about what we should do next?”

“I’m guessing you can’t do that wall trick again?” Allison asked.

Cupcake closed her eyes, then frowned and opened them again. “They’re not the same kind of walls.” The unicorn looked disappointed.

It didn’t seem impossible that there was a door in one of the walls that they just couldn’t see. They checked over every inch (or every inch they could reach, with a group of people where no one was over five and a half feet tall), but either there was nothing to find, or they were missing something. The whole place had a weird feeling to it. Allison’s comment from earlier came back to her all at once. “Allison, you said nothing had changed since you got here, right?”

“Nothing in the space, no. I — talked with my invisible friend for a while, but that’s it.” If there was a chance that Emily and Thackery were able to come and go unnoticed, they didn’t want to give it away. An invisible friend wasn’t an award-winning excuse, but it was workable.

“What about changes for you? Do you feel hungry, or thirsty or anything?”

Allison shook her head. “Not really? But I was trying not to think about it. And it hasn’t been that long.” She hesitated when she saw everyone’s reactions. “Or — it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long? How long do you think it’s been?”

“If you got here the same time we got to the future, then it’s been hours. We all ate, and Sophie took a nap.”

“Everything is really comfortable in the future,” Sophie said.

“That’s good to know,” Allison told her. “It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s been that long for me. What are you thinking?”

She really wished she had a good answer for that question. “I don’t know, that’s the problem. I mean, we’re probably not going to die of starvation, which seems good. I thought the time travel was confusing enough without adding in time itself moving at different rates.”

Allison said, “Okay, brainstorming — time is messed up. Why?”

“Aliens!” Sophie suggested.

The Groundhog was the one who’d gotten them into the time travel thing in the first place. She wondered if he was an alien. “The watch could be broken,” she said. “Or this could be part of the quest.”

“We could be stuck in the event horizon of a black hole,” Cupcake said. “That’s what it always turns out to be on tv.”

Allison took a deep breath. “I hate to even say this. But what if we’re dead?”

“You’re not,” Thackery said immediately, directly into her ear. Only years of practice kept her from turning to look.

“We’re not,” she repeated. She took Allison’s hand and squeezed it. “Trust me.”

Cupcake was shaking her head, but she stopped when she realized everyone was looking at her. “Oh. Sorry, I agree, we’re not dead. I was just thinking — trying to guess how we ended up here doesn’t really help us. Maybe we should focus on our options going forward?”

It was an easier list — their options were pretty limited. Four people in their pajamas, one sometimes-a-ghost-sometimes-a-cat, and a glowing unicorn. Sure, the unicorn was an unknown factor, but even taking that into consideration, they didn’t have a lot of resources to work with. Or at least, they didn’t have a lot of resources with them at the moment. “I think we should call for help,” she said.

“Yes,” Allison agreed. “Seconded.”

“Thirded,” Cupcake said. “If that’s a word. Who are we calling?”

“Everyone!” Sophie said.

 

**In which things begin to become clear**

“Try not to worry. Just because no one showed up right away doesn’t mean they’re not coming,” Allison said. “It took me a while to get in touch with Em— my invisible friend, last time. It could be the time thing making it hard for the messages to get through.”

Sophie nodded. “I know,” she said. “He’s coming. He promised.”

Sophie had called the Easter Bunny, of course, and looked only mildly concerned when he didn’t immediately appear behind her. She had then surprised them all by shouting at the top of her lungs, “Wind! Tell Jack Frost we’re looking for him!”

(“What?” she’d said afterwards. “There’s air. Air is like wind that’s not moving.”

“Does the shouting help?” Allison had asked.

“Shouting makes the air move more,” Sophie told her, the ‘obviously’ left unsaid but clear in her tone.)

Cupcake had done — something, that she said would at least get Pitch’s attention. It had involved the unicorn turning alarmingly dark (“Like a nightmare,” Allison had murmured. “I wonder if it’s dream sand.”) before shifting back to gold. She hadn’t seemed worried at all when Pitch didn’t appear, but then again, they’d been getting largely ignored by him for weeks, so it wasn’t exactly breaking news.

Allison and Thackery had moved on to trying to contact Emily, so far without any luck. She thought that was the most alarming, actually — Emily had already been there once, and she’d been able to find Thackery everywhere else they’d ended up in the timestream without any trouble. No one was giving up, but it hadn’t been the rousing rally of the calvary she’d been hoping for.

On the other hand, even waiting didn’t feel as tedious as it should have — a sure sign there was something weird about the way time was passing. And they hadn’t, technically, exhausted their options. There were a few things they could try summoning with blood, but that could get tricky, especially in such an unknown environment.

They all jumped at the sound of a buzzer. Cupcake grabbed Sophie’s hand, and they all moved closer together. She and Allison kept trying to shuffle around to get the kids in the middle, but it was a little awkward with the unicorn. _”Well, well, well. Someone’s been making trouble. More than just one someone, too.”_

She looked around, trying to find the source of the words, and the voice laughed. _”Did you know, when humans hear a disembodied voice, their natural instinct is to look up? I’ve always liked that. Just that little acknowledgement that I’m above you; it’s so — satisfying.”_

She met Allison’s eyes and raised her eyebrows. Who was this guy?

“Big words for someone who won’t show their face,” Allison said.

_”See, that’s not how this works. I don’t have to show my face, because this isn’t a negotiation. I’m just doing a little housekeeping. Like I said, someone’s been making trouble. You don’t want to stay in your rooms, you don’t want to sit quietly and let me work. You’re cluttering up the place, honestly. What am I going to do with you?”_

“Let us go?” she said. “Just a thought. We’d be happy to be on our way and leave you in peace.”

There was a long pause, and then, _”Oh, were you serious? I thought it was a joke; I was waiting for the punchline. No, that won’t work.”_

Cupcake edged closer to Sophie. “We’re not scared of you,” she said.

_”I don’t care. I’m not one of your Guardians; how you feel doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to me. I just want. To be left. Alone.”_

“Kidnapping people does not seem like a step in the right direction.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret them.

_”You trespassed first. I hardly think it could be considered kidnapping when you keep gallivanting through my territory, muddling things up. You were already here; I simply detained you. As is my right.”_

“So this is about the time travel,” Allison said.

 _”You don’t get points for figuring out the obvious,”_ the voice told them. _”You don’t get points at all. I just have to figure out which of you is making the room misbehave, and — oh, there you are. Someone has an in with the Sandman, do they? It won’t help you for much longer. There’s no sleeping here. No tiredness, no need for dreamland. So your little friend will simply — fade away.”_

“As she is not asleep now, and yet the unicorn remains, your argument lacks evidence.” Another voice came from behind them, and she whirled around.

“Pitch!” Sophie said excitedly.

“Hello, Sophie,” Pitch said, with a smile that was almost genuinely friendly. She figured it was probably even odds that he was faking it for nefarious reasons versus faking it because he’d been living on the moon and hadn’t spoken face to face with a human being for who knew how long. Hopefully it was the second, though. “I’m the first to arrive, I see.” He nodded at Cupcake. “Thank you, for inviting me.”

Cupcake nodded back at him, and the unicorn snorted and stomped a hoof on the floor. “You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m glad you got our messages.”

“Stopped getting them, actually; that’s what made me take a closer look. No one likes being ignored.”

Dani heroically suppressed a sarcastic comment about the blatant hypocrisy of his statement, but she couldn’t quite keep from rolling her eyes, just a tiny bit. It was enough to draw Pitch’s attention. “And such interesting new friends you’ve made, as well.” He took a step closer, and then paused. “You’re not afraid of me. Or you are, but not exactly.”

“No, I definitely am. But I’m afraid of everything. It’s an all the time thing, like a sort of sliding scale of terror. So this is still pretty much my normal.”

Pitch looked from her to Allison, then backtracked to raise an eyebrow at the space between them, where she really hoped Thackery wasn’t making a rude gesture. “As I said, interesting friends. And you?”

Allison shrugged. “Fear and magic don’t mix well. I’ll be scared later.”

“Fair enough.” He turned his attention to the far wall. “And you,” he said, suddenly sounding a thousand times more ominous.

_”Uh, yes. Hello. You have entered the territory of —“_

Pitch cut him off. “I know who you are. Show yourself. Now.”

The wall went transparent for a split second — enough to get a sense of vastness beyond it and not much else — and then someone was walking towards them. “Pitch, so sorry to have pulled you away from your work. There’s been some sort of a misunderstanding; I’m going to stop these humans from bothering you.”

Someone sure had changed their tune quickly. Pitch looked about two seconds from conjuring up a table just so he could rage flip it. He advanced on the newcomer. “Stop them? Bothering me? What gives you the right to —“

“Oh!” she said. “Wait!” Everyone stared at her.

“Dani, what are you doing?” Allison hissed, and even Sophie’s eyes were wide.

“I’m supposed to tell you something!” she said.

Pitch looked bored, which she personally thought was a step up from enraged. “Well?” he said.

Her mind went blank for a second, but she managed to get out, “What is it that makes every dawn a miracle?”

“Riddles?” Pitch said. “You think to appease me with riddles?” And the rage was back. He turned and started in her direction, and Thackery immediately made himself visible next to her. Whatever happened, they’d face it together.

A blast of cold air interrupted them. “Sophie! Did you miss me? Sorry I’m late — had to pick up a few friends along the way. Hey Pitch, welcome back. Good to see you.”

Jack Frost had arrived. Along with the Tooth Fairy, a veritable swarm of tiny fairies, and — much to her surprise — Emily. “Weird way to travel,” she said, dusting herself off and heading over like she wasn’t walking into a confrontation on pause. “But I wasn’t getting through on my own, and — well, if a Guardian shows up and offers to help, you might as well take them up on it, right? I suppose by some reckonings we’re all still children.”

“Frost,” Pitch acknowledged. “Tooth.” He looked at Emily. “Assorted others.”

“That’s me,” she said.

“You are all trespassing!” The man threw his arms out and glared at the entire group. She’d almost forgotten about him, and he clearly sensed that he was rapidly losing control of the situation. “This is unacceptable! How are you even getting in?”

“I’d just like to reiterate that you brought us here,” Allison said. “For the record.”

“Not true! You were already passing through my space, I simply stopped you. Because you’re muddling things up here! Criss-crossing all over the place, forward and back. It’s a disgrace, and it ends now. None of you are supposed to have the power of time travel, I checked. And now you won’t anymore. All’s back as it should be.”

“Uh, it seems pretty clear that’s not true.” Jack flipped up to balance on his staff, giving him a clear view of the room. “Also, who are you?”

 

**In which there is a series of not at all dramatic reveals**

“Jack!” Tooth said. It was probably supposed to be a whisper, but it was easily heard in the quiet of the room. “You don’t recognize him?”

Jack tilted his head. “Nope. Should I?”

She was trying to split her attention between Tooth (who clearly knew who they were dealing with), Pitch (who was closer than she really felt comfortable with if he was still upset about the riddle), and the still-unnamed stranger (she refused to call him the mastermind of the situation). It wasn’t working very well, and she missed Tooth’s reply when Pitch took a step back.

“Huh,” Jack said. “Wow, I always thought he’d be shorter.” He leapt easily across the distance to land in front of the stranger. “Hi there. I’m Jack Frost, you probably know that. People tell me the outfit gives it away. Can’t say the same for you. You really grew into those ears, by the way. Do you go by Baby New Year all the time, or is that more of a seasonal thing?”

She blinked. Baby New Year? Every time she thought she was done being surprised by something being real, it turned out there was more. “I was not expecting that,” Thackery said quietly, and she shook her head.

“Did you know he was real?” she asked.

“I had no idea. It’s not like there’s a directory.”

“Hey, we’re working on that.” She didn’t think he’d want an entry anyway, based on his reaction to the group of them, but stranger things had happened.

Jack’s outstretched had was ignored completely. “I don’t ‘go by’ anything. You don’t need to know my name, and I’m certainly not going to tell you. I still don’t understand how you accessed this space. You shouldn’t be here.”

“It there’s wind, I can get there.” Jack wiggled his fingers. “Air is just wind that’s not moving.”

“See? I told you,” Sophie said.

“There’s no air! We are completely outside the natural world!”

Jack looked as skeptical as she felt. He waved a hand towards the group of them. “I’m breathing. Are you all breathing, if that’s what you normally do?” She nodded, and saw the others doing the same. “See?” Jack said. “They think there’s air. Whatever this place is, there’s definitely air.”

“And teeth,” the Tooth Fairy said. “It’s in the fine print; teeth are kind of our thing. Even yours — you have all your baby teeth, that’s so cute!”

“Stop!” (She couldn’t bring herself to call him Baby New Year, even in her own mind. Maybe he had a middle name? Nickname? They could call him Newby, if it didn’t look like he would try to find a way to eliminate them from reality for doing it.) “I want all of you to leave.”

“All of us?” Jack said. “All right, let’s go, gang, we’ll just leave this guy to his space.”

“Wait.” Pitch held up a hand. “I was invited. And I find myself — unconvinced. By your change of heart. Trying to hide something, perhaps? What have you been getting up to, while no one was watching?”

“Maybe I just decided you’re all too much trouble. First you demand to leave, now you refuse to go? Why couldn’t you have just stayed on the moon? What is it about them that makes you want to be part of this?”

Pitch narrowed his eyes. “It’s something of mine, then, that you’ve been interfering with.”

“I got it!” Cupcake said suddenly. “Not his thing, sorry,” she said. “The riddle. It’s you. Well, it’s darkness, which is your thing, so — close enough.”

“Like the wind, for me,” Jack said.

“Exactly!”

Pitch looked between them like they were speaking a language he didn’t understand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“What is it that makes every dawn a miracle — it’s darkness. We wouldn’t even notice the sunrise if there wasn’t nighttime to contrast it.” Her expression turned stern, and Dani had to stop herself from smiling. “Which is what we’ve been telling you all this time.”

Pitch put a hand to his chest. “Is it? I thought Sophie was flooding my phone with pictures of birds for the sheer fun of it. That would certainly follow someone’s general approach.” He looked at Jack as he said it.

“Hey, the kids came up with this all on their own,” Jack said. “I mean, maybe I borrowed the phone a couple of times, but just to give you some variety.”

“That would explain the yetis.” Pitch raised his voice slightly. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Baby New Year (BNY? Were initials overused?) froze. “It’s — you were talking, and.” He threw up his hands again. “Someone’s coming, and I was going to go see who it is, because it still _shouldn’t be possible_ , but fine, I’ll just wait here while the very foundation of the space falls apart.”

“Oh, please. It’s not going to fall apart. You’re an infant,” Pitch said.

“Only one day a year!”

“No, Pitch is right,” Tooth said, and Pitch smiled. “You’ve been around for, what — less than a century?”

“Considerably less,” Pitch interjected.

Tooth shrugged. “All right, considerably less. Compared to Pitch, that’s super young.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “He’s really old.”

“Toothiana.”

“What? It’s true! Isn’t that what you were just saying?”

“Can we get back to the part where someone’s coming?” Jack said. “I thought we were all here already.”

The wall closest to Tooth wavered. Dani leaned towards Allison. “Are we expecting someone else?”

“Easter Bunny?” Allison guessed. “He did say he showed up after it was over.”

It didn’t seem over to her, but maybe he just meant the part where Pitch showed up and they were all surprised. (She hoped she’d looked surprised enough.) But it wasn’t the Easter Bunny who appeared through the wall. It was Max, followed closely by the Groundhog. “Did you know this was here?” she heard Max ask.

“I was just following you, kid.” The Groundhog took in the room with a glance. “Oh look, what a surprise,” he said, in the least surprised voice she’d ever heard. “Your family is here. Go on, scram.”

Max jogged over to them, and she dove in to make sure she got the first hug. “Are you okay?” she said.

“Am I okay?” He pulled back for a second. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

He definitely didn’t look like he’d been struggling for survival somewhere in the distant past (or future). “We’re good. We’ve been looking for you.”

Max made a face. “Sorry about that. You’re always saying I should watch where I’m going, and I swear I was, but — anyway, I got a ton of writing done. The Groundhog’s not that bad once you get used to him. I’m not sure how we got here, though.”

They went through a couple rounds of hugging, and then a quick set of introductions, once they remembered that Max had no idea who Cupcake and Sophie were, or why they were so excited to see him. She found herself standing between Emily and Thackery. “I love this part,” Emily said. “Hey, are you and Jack talking yet? How’s he doing on the whole — ghost thing?”

“We talked,” Thackery said slowly. “Not about ghosts, specifically. Why?”

Emily nodded, and ignored the question. “But he’s cool with it? No pun intended, ugh, that was awful. He’s not going to freak out if a ghost shows up?”

“Well, we’re both here, and he seems fine.” Thackery leaned around her. “Emily, what are you planning?”

“Planning? Me? Nothing. I met Jack’s sister, is all. Super nice. Great sense of humor. We’ve been comparing notes.”

She couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of notes had been compared, but it would have to wait. They’d all moved to one side when Max showed up, out of the way of whatever Pitch and the Guardians were going to do next, but they were still plenty close enough to hear it when the Groundhog cleared his throat. Loudly.

“Ahem,” he said afterwards. “If you wouldn’t mind. It has come to my attention that someone —“ He glared pointedly at Baby New Year (Benny? Cute, but probably too much like ‘Bunny’ for their current company). “Has been making complaints about a certain magical time travel device.” He produced the pocket watch seemingly from thin air, and held it up. “Seen here. With all of these beings as my witness, I invite the claimant to examine the magical contract in question.” In his other paw he held up a scroll. “Seen here.”

It was the first time she’d actually seen a magical scroll do its thing in person, and it was impressive. It unrolled in a gravity defying swirl, all the way to the feet of Baby New Year.  “You can direct your attention to this section in particular.”  The Groundhog pointed, and a portion of the scroll that had to be at least two feet long highlighted in sparkles.  “Explaining the free and fair use of spaces outside of time for the purpose of magic-aided questing, as defined in this other section here.”  Another few feet of scroll lit up.

“You’re bluffing.  No one’s ever been in this space.”

The Groundhog grumbled.  “Just because I haven’t done the questing thing in a few decades, all the upstarts move in.  How many times have I got to explain this?  I’m the Groundhog.  Lying’s not part of the gig.”

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Tooth said.  “All of us have crossover spaces.  Travel has always been allowed; that’s one of the reasons crossover spaces exist.  Is that what this is about?”

“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Pitch said.  “You’ve been trying to cut this space off entirely.  It’s not working, by the way, but I can see what you were attempting.”

“It was working fine until all of you started traipsing through.”

“Wrong,” the Groundhog said.  “If that was true, we wouldn’t have been able to walk right in.”

“Yes, how did you manage that?”

The Groundhog shook his head.  “Wasn’t me.  It’s the chatterbox.  The Folk told me, but I didn’t believe it till I saw it with my own eyes.  Get him in the general vicinity of a magical portal and he’ll go straight for it, like a lodestone.  It’s uncanny.  Useful, though.”

Pitch looked intrigued.  “Really.”

“Probably just a coincidence,” Allison said.  

“Mm. Perhaps.” Pitch turned his attention back to Baby New Year (Yearby? Too weird?).  “But it would require some sort of energy to maintain, if you were able to succeed in isolating the space.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Of course you don’t; I’m more than capable of figuring out what you’ve been doing on my own. But I won’t need to. Let me give you some advice about executing a plan: it works so much better when you have backup.”

She hadn’t even noticed when Jack and Tooth’s fairies had left, but it was impossible to miss when they came back. Two of the walls disappeared in a shower of snowflakes, and they flew in with a whole herd of nightmares behind them. “It’s the nightmares,” Jack announced, completely unnecessarily. “He’s been luring them in, somehow, and using them as a power source.”

“I am not luring them anywhere; they just show up,” Baby New Year (Scott? Just go totally random?) insisted. “Everyone thinks they’re a nuisance. You should be thanking me.”

“Georgina!” Sophie said. “There you are!” One of the nightmares trotted over to her, and she giggled when it nuzzled her hair.

“‘Everyone’ thinks they’re a nuisance?” Pitch asked. “Obviously not.”

Tooth coughed. “Okay, first, that’s adorable. Someone should take a picture for Bunny.” She turned to Baby New Year (Bonny? Like a bonny lad, or Bonnie and Clyde?). “Second, you should be thanking us, because you clearly have no idea what you’re dealing with. What did you think would happen when you put a whole bunch of nightmares in a small space? And third —“

She looked at Pitch, and put her hands on her hips. “We are not your backup. If anything, you’re our backup. We didn’t even know you were coming.”

“I was invited,” Pitch said.

Jack shooed the fairies away from a nightmare that was getting restless. “You keep saying that. I don’t get it.”

“Try going a few thousand years with no one wanting you around,” Pitch said dryly. “You’ll find an invitation makes an impression.” He rubbed his hands together. “Gives one a certain sense of — wanting to deliver.” He nodded to Cupcake again, and rolled his eyes (but still held out his hand) when Sophie offered a high five. “So. If no one minds?”

 

**In which Pitch takes care of business**

No one minded. Or at least no one said anything, which she figured was close enough. Pitch smiled. “Excellent. You first, New Year. There’s the matter of the nightmares, and let’s not forget about attempting to disrupt a magical contract. Father Time?”

“Oh, come on! That’s not fair!” Baby New Year (Rainbow? Like Baby New Year backwards, and then approximated to the closest english word?) straight up pouted as a swirling vortex opened up next to him. She immediately checked where Max was, but Allison had a grip on his arm and a determined expression on her face. A voice came through the portal. _”Really, Year?”_ (Why hadn’t she thought of that one?) _”Again?”_

He trudged into the portal without another word, and it disappeared behind him with a pop.

“Wait, could we have just done that at any time?” she asked. “Not that I didn’t appreciate all the explanations, but — really?”

“Well, not at any time,” Pitch said. “Only at the right time. Which was just then.”

“I can’t believe you just quoted a cartoon rabbit,” Jack said.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Pitch didn’t look entirely convinced, but he was apparently willing to let it go. “Next up is the nightmares.” The herd perked up their ears in his direction. “Yes, that’s you. You’ve been on the hunt for magic, have you? Would you be open to a negotiation?”

There was a rumbling and shuffling from the herd, and then they parted just enough for a path to the center to open up. (She checked on Max again — he’d slipped away from Allison, but the unicorn stepped up to block his approach, shaking its head.) Pitch walked forward without hesitation, and disappeared into the mass of nightmares. She looked at Thackery. “Should we be worried?”

“About him, or us?”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “I was talking about him. Why, do you think we should be worried about us?”

She was expecting a quick no — after all, the danger seemed to be past, and they had two extremely unworried Guardians lounging nearby. Instead, he hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “No? Not worried, exactly. But time doesn’t move the same in spaces like this; I think that’s why Emily said that where we were in the future felt similar. I’m — somewhat concerned about how long we’ve all been here.”

Instantly her mind was full of awful possibilities. “Because we’re unstuck in time and will never be able to get back home? Or we will, but it will be thousands of years in the future and we’ll trapped in a weird dystopia that only came into existence because we messed up the timeline?”

“No.” At least there hadn’t been any hesitation that time. “I was thinking more like your parents could worry, and it might make things tricky for Thanksgiving.” She tried to convince herself that wasn’t worse than a dystopia, with only partial success.

“Right. Anything we can do about it at the moment?”

“Hope for the best?”

“Got it.”

She took a deep breath, and tried to think calm, happy thoughts. Purring cats, fully stocked cupboards, no line at the checkout, that sort of thing. It felt like it didn’t take long at all after that for Pitch to emerge, but she wasn’t sure if that meant anything.

He looked happy enough, at least. And whatever had been decided, it made Tooth’s fairies start up some kind of celebration, so she guessed it had gone well. “That’s all settled, then,” Pitch said. “Now — on to the rest of you.”

“Hey!” The Groundhog’s shout got everyone’s attention. “Yeah, that’s right, over here. I did my bit. Pitch, you sticking around for a while? Not going back to the moon?”

“I believe I’ll be remaining on-planet for a while yet, yes.”

“And you’ll be taking care of the nightmares, so they won’t be such a problem any more?”

“They’ve agreed to a — mutually beneficial arrangement, yes.”

“Good,” he said gruffly. “See that it is. I’ll be going, then. I’m done here. Kid, I won’t miss you. Other kids, you did all right with the questing. Consider it finished; let’s never do this again.”

He disappeared, and Tooth sighed. “I was really hoping he wasn’t going to do that.”

Allison frowned. “What? Why?”

Tooth bit her lip. “The Groundhog is the one who would be the best choice for getting you back to your home on the same day you left. But he’s not specifically bound by the rules to do that, and he doesn’t have to end a quest in the same time or place he began it, if he’s the one who determines it’s finished.”

That sounded bad. “Which means what?” Allison said. “Are we stuck here?”

Jack’s, “Of course not!” was considerably more reassuring than Tooth’s, “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

Pitch just rolled his eyes. “Jack, go find the rabbit,” he said. “He’ll want to be here for this. Really, Tooth, I thought you were supposed to be good with children. I’m supposed to be the scary one. If you’re so intent on doing my job for me, though, I can handle yours, just this once.”

He held his hand out for Sophie, who honestly still looked like she was having a blast. The nap had been a good idea. (They probably all should have taken one.) “You are most certainly not stuck here. Any one of us could escort you out right now. The question is when you would end up, if we were to do that without a certain amount of planning first. We’re currently outside of the standard flow of time, and that gives us some flexibility. As soon as the rabbit arrives, we can get started.”

The back of her neck tingled, and sure enough, the Easter Bunny popped into the room with Jack on his heels. “Ah, there he is,” Pitch said. “Finally.”

“Bunny! Look!” Sophie held up Pitch’s hand, which she was still holding.

Bunny made a face, somewhere between a grimace and a smile, but he sounded proud when he said, “Yeah, I see it, Soph. You got him.”

Jack just looked excited. “So, are we doing this?”

The conversation that followed exceeded her knowledge of time travel and the rules thereof almost immediately. She tried not to pay attention after she heard Tooth exclaim, “Well, sure, if we think a fifty percent chance of de-aging them all a decade or so is acceptable odds!”

(Bunny had growled out an, “Absolutely not,” so she was pretty sure they were going with a different plan. Hopefully.)

But eventually they all seemed to come to an agreement, or they got tired of arguing about it, and Pitch said, “All right, then. We’re ready.”

It was Emily who stepped forward to question him. “Ready, like ‘everything is going to be fine and they’re definitely going to end up arriving back at the same time they left’ or ready, like ‘you’ve gotten it down to a twenty percent chance that something will go completely wrong’?” She put her hands on her hips. “Because I could make a few calls. Somebody out there must have done this successfully before.”

Pitch exchanged glances with the others, but they’d obviously elected him to be the one to explain the plan (possibly without asking him first), and he sighed. “It won’t be exactly the same time you left. That patch of time has too many pulls on it already. The safest option is to drop you back at the next new moon.” Bunny muttered something, probably about Pitch’s idea of safety, and Tooth elbowed him in the side.

“All of us,” Pitch said, glaring at Bunny. “Agree that it will work. Feel free to discuss your options amongst yourselves.”

“What day is the new moon?” Cupcake asked.

She looked at Allison, who said, “Not until the 18th. We’d lose about two weeks.”

Emily looked impressed. “That’s really good, actually. I was thinking more like Winter Solstice.”

So two weeks wasn’t ideal, but not as bad as it could be, either. She shrugged. “I’m okay with it.” She and Max would have to do some fast talking to reassure their parents, but it wasn’t like they’d never been out of contact before.

“Agreed,” Thackery said quickly. Of course, once you’d been around for hundreds of years, your perspective on two weeks was bound to be slightly different.

“I’ve already been gone for, what — a few weeks?” Max said.

“Almost a month,” Allison confirmed, and he nodded.

“So what’s a couple more? I’m in.”

Cupcake nodded too, more slowly. “Sure. What the heck, I’ll figure something out with school. Sophie? Are you okay with that?”

“We won’t miss Thanksgiving?”

“Nope. We’d still be a few days before it.”

“Okay! I’m good then.”

“I’m good too,” Allison said.

“And I’m coming with you,” Emily told them. “To save myself the trouble of tracking you down again.”

She looked at Thackery. “You ready for this?”

“Always.”

 

**In which there is a chore chart and a homecoming, not in that order**

The return trip was about as unpleasant as she’d expected, but it was successful, and they all stood around in the backyard looking pleased (the Guardians) and relieved (everyone else). No one seemed to know quite what to do next, until Pitch gave an exaggerated sigh. “Well, it’s been a delight, but I really must be going. Things to do, places to see.”

“Pitch, wait!” Tooth said, but he had already disappeared.

“I suppose we should go after him,” Bunny said.

“Or we could wait a while,” Jack suggested, swinging up to perch on top of the gazebo. “See what happens.”

Tooth looked serious for a few seconds, and then said, “We could. Of course, if we did that—“ She met Jack’s eyes, and they both yelled, “Dibs on not telling North!” and took off, laughing.

Bunny grumbled and shook his fist a little, but she was pretty sure he was doing it just because it made Sophie giggle. “You all in one piece?” he asked them. “Want one of us to stick around for a while?”

They assured him that they would be fine, and left Sophie describing everything he’d missed while the rest of them headed inside. Thackery immediately shifted, and she scritched between Binx’s ears. “Well, no one robbed the place,” she said. “That’s good.”

Allison nodded. “I guess we should find our phones. Quick check of the house, grab anything that has messages on it, meet back here?”

It was weird, being back — it felt like it had only been a day, but there was absolutely enough dust for it to have been two weeks. At least the houseplants were set up to self-water, or they would have come back to some very unhappy sprigs. She was a little surprised their neighbors hadn’t called the police, though. It had to be weird not to see anyone going in or out for two weeks, right? Maybe their neighbors just thought they were that strange. (Or, she supposed, the neighbors could have been on vacation. Or thought they were on vacation. That was a thing people did.)

They gathered back in the living room, various devices and chargers in hand.  Allison got hers going first, probably because she didn’t have a cat between her and the keyboard.  “Binx,” she said.  “I’m not sure you’re helping.”

“Helping is relative.”

Cupcake laughed, and Binx gave her a smug look.  “See?  Cupcake agrees with me.”

“I have over 200 emails,” Allison said.  “Ten of them are from Jamie Bennett and just say CALL ME FIRST in all caps.”

“I have them too.  I’ll get Sophie,” Cupcake said.

She distracted herself deleting junk mail until Sophie bounced into the room.  “He probably just wants to let us know what he’s been telling Mom and Dad.  He’s super dramatic.”

She caught Allison’s eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing— must be a family trait — and she hid a smile.  “I hope so,” she said.  

 _”Hi guys, welcome back!  I’m your first call, right?”_  Jamie’s voice was clear and only slightly nervous.

“Hi Jamie!” Sophie called.

“So what’s going on?” Allison asked. “We got your message.  Messages.”

 _”Yeah, about that,”_ Jamie said.   _”Here’s the thing.  I told Mom about how you’d met Allison and Dani, because I thought she’d like that you had real adults around.  Except it turned out that Mom knows Dani’s mom?  And then she started asking me how you were doing, because she couldn’t reach you, and I wasn’t sure what to tell her.”_

She wasn’t sure whether it was funnier that Jamie thought they counted as “real adults” or that he sounded so baffled that that grownups might know each other.  “And?” Allison prompted. “What happened?”

_”So, I told them you were really busy, and you probably hadn’t had a chance to get back to them.  And then they wanted to know what was keeping you so busy.  So I said you were working on a secret project to host all of us for Thanksgiving.”_

He said the last sentence all in a rush, and it took her a second to spread out the sounds into actual words. She could see the instant everyone else got it too, and Binx put his ears back as they all talked over each other.  

“What?”

“You told them what?”

“All of you?”

“I hope she didn’t believe you!”

_”I’m pretty sure she did.  Um, sorry?”_

“Deep breaths,” Allison muttered.  “Deep breaths.  Okay, Jamie —we’re not mad at you; this is just — a surprise.  Can you tell us everything you told them about this secret plan?”

_”Oh sure, absolutely.”_

What followed was a convoluted description of Cupcake’s decision to not go home for Thanksgiving, which then rambled through various fictional conversations about travel and cooking logistics, combined with weather forecasts for the entire eastern seaboard.  Eventually it circled back to the actual holiday meal, and their completely imaginary decision to invite everyone to Salem to celebrate with them.

“This kid’s good,” Max said admiringly. “Who is he, again?”

“He’s Sophie’s brother,” she told him quietly.

Allison leaned closer to the screen. “When you say everyone — who is that, exactly?  How many people are we talking about, and are any of them are planning on staying here overnight?”

_”Okay, so there’s all of you there already, which is like five people who eat food — you’re all there, right?  And then there’s Mom and Dad, and Dani and Max’s mom and dad, so that’s five more, but we’re all staying at a bed and breakfast because it has history, or atmosphere, or something, so don’t worry about that part.  Oh, but then Pippa’s parents are going on a cruise for the holiday and she didn’t want to miss that much school, and she said she could come help if you want.  So one more, really, but she’s the only one who would need a place to stay.”_

She wasn’t sure he’d taken a breath the whole time he’d been talking.  She would be more impressed if he hadn’t just told them they were apparently going to be hosting Thanksgiving dinner for eleven people. The house was still decorated for Halloween, for crying out loud.

“Okay,” Allison said slowly.  “Who’s Pippa?”

“She lived on our street in Burgess,” Cupcake said.  “I thought she was in Vermont.”

_”She is.  She says nothing this exciting ever happens there, so she’s driving down.  She’s totally in the loop, though.  I guess they do a lot on campus with the local tree wizards, or something?  But she’s probably the best one of us at doing the social gathering thing, so I said she should come.  Really glad you’re back, though, we were scrambling to come up with something to do if you were still gone next week.”_

“Tree wizards?” she said, and Cupcake shrugged.

“I don’t know anything about that, but Pippa is good at family dinners. She can always stay with us at the apartment if there’s not space here.”

There was approximately a million times more space in the house than in Cupcake’s apartment, but it was still a nice offer. “We’re absolutely not going to let free labor stay off site,” she said. “I mean, unless she wants to. Or you want to. But we have plenty of room.”

“Jamie, when is Pippa getting here?” Allison asked. “Actually, when are all of you getting here?”

_”Pippa’s last class is Tuesday morning, so she can drive down on Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever works better for you guys. The rest of us are flying in Thursday morning — our flights get in around the same time, so they’re renting a car together. Dad says it will give them a chance to get to know your parents better, so heads up on that. We should be there by noon.”_

She was absolutely not going to imagine her parents in a car with Sophie’s parents. They needed to come up with a plan, and she needed to not be distracted wondering what their parents would find to talk about, hopefully other than their somewhat peculiar children. “Noon. We can do that.” She looked at Allison. “We can do that, right?”

“Sure we can.” Allison was still doing her deep breathing, but she rallied well.

“We managed the quest, right? And getting Pitch to come back,” Cupcake said. “We’ll just think of this as another adventure.”

“Side quest,” Sophie whispered loudly. It was enough to break the tension.

Allison nodded decisively. “That sounds good. Jamie, we’ll be ready for you at noon on Thanksgiving. If you can get us in touch with Pippa, we’ll figure out which day she should come.”

“Thanks for your help, Jamie!” she called, sparking off a round of ‘thank you’s and ‘good job’s from around the room.

Binx was the last one to speak, and Jamie blinked. “Talking cat,” he said. “I feel like I should have seen that coming, and yet — nope. Still plenty of surprises left.”

Cupcake started filling him in on everything else he’d missed, and Dani moved closer to Allison so they wouldn’t have to talk over the group conversation. “I’m thinking we need a list,” she said.

Allison dropped her head onto her shoulder. “Give me like ten seconds to freak out here,” she said. Sure enough, a ten count later, she sat up again. “Okay, I’m good for now. Lists, yes. I’m thinking we probably need more than one. But let’s start with that and go from there.”

“This is going to be the list other lists dream about. We can color code it and everything. Red for things my parents will freak out about, blue for things that will make the neighbors talk, yellow for things that will actually be useful after the holiday is over.“

“Oh, is that the standard color code system now? We need a whiteboard if we’re doing colors.”

“I’m on it, hang on.”

There was a travel mug she didn’t recognize in the sink drying rack when she walked into the kitchen, and she grabbed it along with the whiteboard. “Anyone know who this belongs to?” she asked. “Or do we have a burglar who’s leaving things instead of taking them?”

“My mug!” Cupcake exclaimed. “It’s mine — that’s the one the Groundhog took, when we met him the first time. He must have brought it back.”

“Washed and everything,” she said. “Small miracles. A few dozen more of those, and we’ll be all set.”

 

**In which a few dozen miracles occur, but a good night’s sleep isn’t one of them**

They ordered pizza, because there was absolutely not enough non-perishable food in the house to feed five people, and finishing a quest probably deserved a celebration anyway.

“My advisor wants to meet with me,” Cupcake said, pushing a crust around her plate. “On Monday. It’s hard to tell from the email, but it doesn’t sound like a ‘we’re kicking you out of school’ meeting.”

“Do you want one of us to go with you?” she asked. “Allison’s great at meetings.”

“Thanks, but I think I should do this one alone. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed. Sophie’s going to keep her fingers crossed too.”

“Yup! Unless I’m helping and I have to use my hands for something else,” Sophie said. “Are we starting today?”

It was already pretty late, although part of that was the time change — another thing they’d missed while they were gone. She didn’t think they were at the point of staying up all night to work on things. (But they might get there, so they should sleep while they could.) Sophie started yawning before she could come up with a good answer, and Cupcake said, “You’re going to bed. You can help tomorrow, okay?”

Sophie protested, and Cupcake told her, “Anyone whose age isn’t in the double digits goes to bed first,” which of course made Binx perk right up.

“Triple digits,” he crowed. “Bedtime for me too, then,” and Sophie followed him right up the stairs, trailed by Emily.

“Anyone else?” Allison asked. “We could probably do a quick sweep of the house tonight, make sure we find anything that needs to get thrown out.”

She nodded. “And then menu planning. At least the basics; we need to start shopping tomorrow.” They could probably do curbside pickup — at least they could avoid any questions about where they’d been for the last two weeks until they’d decided on an explanation.

“I do have one piece of good news,” Allison said. She climbed onto a chair to reach the cupboard over the refrigerator. “I restocked the emergency candy stash after the gale-pocalypse. Somehow I thought it might come in handy.” She pulled a bag out of the cupboard, and then another bag. And then one more. “What? There was a sale.”

“What’s a gale-pocalypse?” Max asked.

“It was while you were gone,” she told him. “It was super windy, and we ate all the Halloween candy. And that reminds me we should probably do something with the yard. Raking?” She looked at Allison. “Please tell me we can use magic for that.”

“We can use magic for that. Not tonight, though. Grab some candy, go find trash. Or recycling; that would be good too. And anything that looks like it’s a Halloween decoration and not just generally fall-themed.”

She left before Allison could add anything else to the list, and pulled Max along with her. “Come on, we can start in the back of the house.”

“Thanks,” he said.

He seemed like he might leave it at that, and she was pretty sure any variation on ‘are you sure you’re okay’ would get nowhere, so she said, “It might sound like a ridiculous plan, but we actually have done this before. Remember when we did Christmas here a few years back?”

“With all the pies? Why, was there time travel involved in that too?”

“No, we got the pies from a bakery in town and warmed them in the oven. We were going to try to make them, but then Allison got stuck in a cursed locket for a few days, and that threw everything off. But we did it. Speed cleaning and decorating is kind of our specialty at this point.”

Max shook his head. “I guess I’m glad I’m not the only one who winds up in weird situations. I think I’m glad, anyway.”

“We missed you,” she said. She didn’t say ‘we were worried about you,’ because he was family — they worried about each other all the time, whether they were standing next to each other or separated by a magical quest. “The Groundhog said he’d dropped you somewhere in time.”

"Really?  I mean, I don't think he did?  It felt like I was just hanging out with him in his burrow, or whatever.  There were a lot of caves."  He shuffled a few papers into a slightly neater pile, and then added, "Thanks for coming after me.  What was it like, seeing the past and the future like that?"

She wiped her sleeve over one of the shelves, and flipped all the jack-o-lantern cutouts around so they looked like plain pumpkins.  "Surprisingly like the present, actually.  I met Allison as a kid, that was fun.  Hey, remember Ms. Olin?  I met her too; she ID'd me right away as being out of place."  Max had never gotten along with her, but they'd all mellowed over the years.  "I'm glad to be back home, though."

"You didn't ever want to stick around somewhere else?  Like, if you could go any time you wanted?"  

Despite the fact that the watch didn't work that way, she couldn't say she hadn't thought about it.  "I'm good here," she said.  "I guess I feel like -- we worked hard to get to this specific point in time.  And I'm kind of curious to see how it all turns out."

"Which you could do by jumping into the future," Max said.  "I still can't believe you were there and didn't find out anything cool."

She threw a mitten at him.  (Seriously, they'd had a small child in the house for just a few days, and they already had an assortment of single mittens and socks floating around.  How did these things happen?)  "I found out no one uses the word cool anymore.  Also, there was quicksand, so I think we get an automatic pass on that trip. Besides, you might be able to see how the big things turned out, but it's the little stuff that makes it worth it, right?"

Max stared at her.  "Hang on, I'm still stuck on the quicksand part."  Apparently no one had told him about that yet.  "Is this one of those things I'd be happier not knowing about?"

"It was an experience," she told him.  "One I wouldn't have minded not having, but it probably taught me something, and it makes a good story, so all in all it turned out okay."  

"That pretty much describes my entire last month," Max said.  "So for once I know exactly how you feel."

"You're good, though?" she said.  

He bumped their shoulders together, and she was pretty sure he'd just put the mitten on her head. But he was smiling, and she was willing to take that as a victory.  "Yeah," he said.  "I'm good."

They made it through the rest of the ground floor in under an hour and exchanged quick high fives and good nights with Allison and Cupcake in the living room.  Binx was asleep on her pillows when she finally made it upstairs.  "Don't think you're getting out of helping tomorrow," she said.  "You may not be able to drive a car, but Allison's totally sticking you on online ordering duty."

He flicked an ear at her.  "I'm good at the internet."

"That is very true -- just remember to use your powers for good and order some food for us too, okay?"

"Mm-hmm."  He rolled over onto his side and finally opened his eyes.  "Did you and Max have a nice talk?"

She pulled the bottom pillow out from the pile and pointedly brushed the cat fur in his direction.  (He ignored it.)  "Yes, we did, thanks for asking.  What about you and Emily?  Everything all sorted out for now?"

He sighed.  "I hope so?  You'd think we'd be better at this after all this time."

"Don't look at me; I have no idea how it's all supposed to work.  If it helps, though, from the perspective of the youngest sibling -- pretty much all I ever wanted was to know that Max was paying attention."  

"And now?"

She shrugged.  "I'm not sure you ever totally outgrow that feeling, but I'll let you know.  She seems happy, she talks about having a support network, and she knows how to find you when she needs you: those are three good signs, right?"

"I suppose."

"Hey, always happy to share my younger sister wisdom with you, you know that."

If he said anything in reply, she was asleep before it happened. It was hard to stay settled, though, and she slept restlessly, in fits and starts.  It felt like her brain wasn’t convinced it was night time, and kept trying to remind her to get up. She finally gave up around six, and rolled over with a groan.  "Ugh.  Why does sleep hate me right now?"

Binx yawned next to her.  "Just a guess, but all the jumping in and out of the timestream?  Probably not great for circadian rhythms."

"Time travel jet lag, fantastic.  How about you?"

"Cats don't get jet lag."  

"I can't tell if you actually know that, or you're just making it up, but I'm jealous either way."  She was going to have to get up.  Soon.  Eventually.  Maybe.

"I smell coffee?" Binx offered.

Or right away; that would work too.  “The day is looking up,” she said.  “Gold star to you and your super nose.“

“Happy to help.” He stretched, and she joined in, trying to convince her shoulders that she hadn’t been hunching them for hours the day before. Non-timestream hours shouldn’t count, right? “Bring me back a bagel?” Binx asked. “And the shopping list.”

“Having a stay-in morning?” She rolled her eyes over the bagel request, but she wasn’t entirely surprised that he wasn’t joining them for breakfast. Three extra people in the house, and all of them planning to spend the day moving things around and making noise — add in the weather turning unexpectedly colder overnight, and it was a trifecta of his least favorite things. “Sounds good. I’ll see what I can do on the bagel and shopping fronts.”

Of course, it turned out only Allison had actually ventured to the kitchen, and they sat in a companionable silence for a while, watching the steam rise out of their mugs. “Binx says it’s probably jet lag,” she said finally. “From the time travel.”

“Well, that’s a lot better than my guess that we’d been cursed with eternal suffering,” Allison said.

She was surprised enough to laugh, and then remembered they were trying to be quiet in case the others were still sleeping. “I hope not. It kind of feels like that when you can’t sleep, though, no argument here.”

Allison put her head down on the table. “Dani. We’re hosting Thanksgiving. We weren’t supposed to have to host Thanksgiving this year. I have three dozen slightly magical plants rooting in the upstairs bathroom, and a dozen more in the downstairs bathroom.”

They should probably move those, yeah. “We can put them in the attic for the day. Isn’t that the classic witch’s domain anyway?”

“I’m pretty sure that was only in that movie with the pancakes. Attics are usually for the crazy relative.”

It was too easy. She couldn’t even bring herself to make the obvious joke, because Allison was clearly too tired to enjoy it. “Hey,” she said instead. “We can do this. You know that, right?”

“Objectively, I believe it can be done,” Allison said. “I’m having trouble mustering up the motivation to actually start, though.”

“I think that’s the jet lag talking. Drink your coffee. I’ll make toast, and if things don’t look better after that, we’ll flee the country in the dark of night, change our names, and never speak of this again.”

“Deal.”

 

**In which many thanks are given**

They didn’t flee the country. But, as Allison kept pointing out, there was still time. By Wednesday afternoon, they had cleaned and cooked, and then cleaned again and cooked some more. (And bought pies from the bakery, because the best baker in the group was Max, and he hadn’t leveled up past cookies.) Cupcake hadn’t been kicked out of school, Sophie also hadn’t been kicked out of school, and Max had slipped in under the wire to get his rent paid on time. Pippa arrived just in time to join in on the group nap in the living room.

“Best Thanksgiving tradition ever,” she declared, once they were all awake again.

“Wait till you see what we’re doing next,” Allison said. “We may be using disposable plates because we’re so sick of washing dishes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun.”

“How does having a fire in the backyard have anything to do with dishes?” Max asked.

Allison hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s been a long week.”

Max frowned. “It’s Wednesday.”

“And that is my point exactly.” Allison yawned, which set everyone off, and Dani threw a pillow at Max when no one was looking.

Sophie waved her feet in the air. “Naps are okay. Are we doing the fire now? Can I invite Bunny?”

“You can invite them all if you want. We have a lot of marshmallows.”

The pre-Thanksgiving marshmallow roast and gratitude party was a recent addition to the holiday routine, but it was fun. Cold, sometimes, but fun. It was a good way to get out of the house — they could do a little domestic blessing, eat some sugar, and remind themselves that good things could be found even when you least expected them. “I need warmer socks,” she said.

Max threw the pillow back at her, but Allison stood up before it could turn into a free for all.  "Right, let's get this going,” she said.  “Socks, hats -- we have lots of extra warm stuff if anyone needs it, and blankets in the back room."  

Sophie made a beeline for the backyard, and the rest of them trailed along at a somewhat slower pace, collecting things up as they went.  Binx immediately claimed a chair and a pile of blankets.  Cupcake and Pippa declared their intent to put up twinkle lights on the gazebo. Since they'd already managed the first step — finding where they’d put the strings of lights when they’d been taken down in the spring, no one was going to stop them from at least making the attempt.  

"It looks good," Allison said.

"You always think it looks good when someone else does it."  She accidentally caught her marshmallow on fire.  "Well, that one's a little extra well done."

Binx sighed.  "I thought you were toasting them, not torching them."  

"Either's good.  It makes them crunchy on the outside."

"I think you mean gross on the outside," Max said.  

"Oh, please.  How long have you been working on that one?  Ten minutes?  Some of us actually want to eat our marshmallows tonight, not tomorrow."

Max shook his head.  "Perfection is worth waiting for."

"Perfection is an illusion," she countered.  "Live in the now."

"I am living in the now -- the now where I don't want to eat a charred marshmallow."

Her ears popped, as the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, and Pitch Black joined them all at once.  ”Bunny!" Sophie shouted.  

"Hey Sophie.  Heard you had a party going on.  Found these two troublemakers along the way."

"Any marshmallow is a good marshmallow," Jack said.  “That’s the official word from me."

Allison extracted one hand from her blanket cocoon and waved.  "Welcome.  Make yourselves at home, have some marshmallows if you want."  

She got distracted watching Jack "help" with the lights, and when she looked away she realized Pitch was standing right next to her.  She tried not to startle too obviously. “Hey.”

He sighed.  "I fail to understand the appeal of that greeting, but I suppose the intent is clear enough.  Hello."

Just for a second, she let herself think that it might have been easier when all they'd gotten was a question mark.  "How are you finding being back on earth?" she asked.  That was safe enough, right?

He was quiet for long enough that she thought he might not answer.  Finally, though, he said, "Tedious, frequently.  But, occasionally, immensely worthwhile."

"Sounds about right.  That's us."

There was another pause, and then he said, “Do you think it's possible, to believe in the Bogeyman and yet not be frightened by it?"

"For someone other than Sophie, you mean?"  She was pretty sure he was talking in the more global sense, but it couldn't hurt to point out exhibit A directly in front of them.  He nodded, and she tried to organize her thoughts into something coherent. “Look, I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for in an answer.  I think fear is more complicated than a yes or a no; I think most things are.  Fear is — multifaceted, and so is our relationship to it. If the kids believe in you but aren’t afraid of you, maybe fear isn’t the core of who you are.” She snuck a glance in his direction, but he was watching the fire. “Any of this working for you?“

He gave a tiny smile. “You said you were scared of everything. I thought you might have a — unique perspective, on the question. I appreciate the food for thought.”

There was a burst of noise from the gazebo, where Jack was demonstrating proper light draping by using Bunny as a model. Pitch was gone when she looked back, and she wondered if Jack was paying enough attention to him to be doing it on purpose, or if it was just coincidence.

Sophie dropped into the chair on her other side. “Hey Dani. Are you done with your marshmallow stick? I thought we were going to do magic, is that next?”

She looked at Allison, who somehow managed to look dignified even wrapped up in fuzzy blankets. "We’re doing magic right now.  It isn’t always spells and rituals and enchanted objects.  It's laughter, and good food, and being with people you care about -- all that stuff is magic too."

Sophie looked skeptical. “It doesn’t feel like magic.”

“We can do something more formal, if you’d like,” Allison offered. “Ask everyone if they’ll come join the circle around the fire.” She sat up and pulled her gloves off, rubbing her hands together. When she pulled them apart, there was a glowing ball between them.

“I give thanks for the new friends we’ve made,” she said. She turned to Sophie, on her left. “Hold out your hands?” When their fingers touched, a second ball of light starting glowing in Sophie’s hands. “And then you say something too, and pass it on.”

Sophie nodded. “I’m grateful for my family, all of them, especially the ones here now and the ones coming to visit tomorrow.” She turned to Cupcake, and — after a couple of false starts — got a third light glowing.

“I give thanks for getting to finish the semester,” she said.

“I give thanks for having somewhere to go for the holiday,” was Pippa’s contribution.

Jack’s light looked suspiciously like a snowball. “I’m grateful for seeing my sister again.”

“You have my thanks for the invitation,” Pitch said, and gracefully managed the hand-off to Bunny.

“I give thanks for the seasons,” he said. He sighed, and added, “All of them,” and pretended not to notice Jack’s fist pump.

Binx had plenty of practice in this game, and he touched his nose to Bunny’s paws, letting the ball of light roll up over his head and down around to rest in front of him. “I give thanks for community.”

He nudged the light in her direction, and she cupped it in her hands, enjoying the warmth. “I give thanks for communication.”

Max was last, and he looked around the circle for a few seconds before speaking. “I’m grateful that I have people who came looking for me, and that they had people who came looking for them.”

He reached out to touch his hands to Allison’s, and all the lights glowed a little brighter. “Tonight we give thanks for the darkness,” she said. “And tomorrow we’ll wake up and give thanks for the dawn too.”

All of the lights rose up above their heads and burst into silent fireworks. The sparks joined with snowflakes as they fell back down, and everyone ooh’d and ahh’d appreciatively.

And then it was all hugs and ‘see you soon’s and ‘has anyone seen my other mitten.’ It was time to get some sleep, and face whatever happened next in the morning.

Binx caught her eye as they started packing up. “You ready for this?”

“Always.”


End file.
